统计学发展过程中四次重要的争论及其影响

On the Four Major Debates in the Development of Statistics and their Effects

统计学发展过程中出现过几次重大的争论,这些争论在本质上可以说是一脉相承的。"政治算术"与"国势学"的争论,明确了统计学的学科性质;"描述统计学"与"推断统计学"的争论,构筑了统计学的完整体系;"经典统计学"与"贝叶斯统计学"的争论,带来了统计哲学观的新变化;信念统计学与经典统计学、贝叶斯统计学的争论,使统计推断科学化问题的研究日趋深入。正是通过这些争论完善了现代统计学的思想和方法体系。

There were in the development of statistics a number of important debates, which were essentially all in the same strain. The paper consists of four parts: part 1 discusses the debate between Political Arithmetic and Staatenkunde, which defines the nature of the science of statistics; part 2 introduces the arguments between Descriptive Statistics and Inference Statistics, which helps to build a comprehensive system of statistics; part 3 elaborates on the debate between Classical Statistics and Bayesian Statistics, which leads to changes in philosophical views of statistics, and part 4 comments on the debates among Fisher Fiducial Inference Statistics, Classical Statistics, and Bayesian Statistics, which helps to further the study of scientification of statistic inference. These debates help the mainstream theory of modern statisticsthought and methodology of statistic inference mature .