Statistical Methods for Research Workers

Reviews

According to Denis Conniffe:

Ronald A. Fisher was "interested in application and in the popularization of statistical methods and his early book Statistical Methods for Research Workers, published in 1925, went through many editions and motivated and influenced the practical use of statistics in many fields of study. His Design of Experiments (1935) [promoted] statistical technique and application. In that book he emphasized examples and how to design experiments systematically from a statistical point of view. The mathematical justification of the methods described was not stressed and, indeed, proofs were often barely sketched or omitted altogether ..., a fact which led H. B. Mann to fill the gaps with a rigorous mathematical treatment in his well-known treatise, Mann (1949)."

According to Erich L. Lehmann:

Even reviewers who were not offended by Fisher's attack on traditional methods found much to criticize. In particular, they complained about Fisher's dogmatism, the lack of proofs, the emphasis on small samples, and the difficulty of the book. However, a review by Harold Hotelling, which was submitted to the Journal of the American Statistical Association in 1927, did justice to Fisher's achievement. Hotelling stated in his review that "most books on statistics consist of pedagogic rehashes of identical material. This comfortably orthodox subject matter is absent from the volume under review, which summarizes for the reader the author's independent codification of statistical theory and some of his brilliant contributions to the subject, not all of which have previously been published".