The History of Statistics as a Genre

Abstract

To what extent does the history of statistics belong to the literary genre of “social constructions”? Does this genre include the development of national statistics? This brief historical summary of selected steps in the social uses of history and, more recently, of the history of science, can be helpful for examining the different ways in which the history of statistics has been written and used. It includes five sections: The First Period of National Statistical Histories (1800-1920); The Difficulties of Statistical Internationalism; The History of the Mathematization of Statistics; The New Wave of National-Statistics History (since 1975); The Bielefeld Group and the “Probabilistic Revolution”.