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"Still waiting for the revolution": Review of The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century, by David Salsburg. Reviewed by David Colquhoun. Nature, 31 May 2001, pages 624-625.
The reviewer calls this book "the fun side of statistics." The book discusses the lives and work of many of the outstanding statisticians of the 20th century and also provides a perspective on the influence of statistics in science. The title of the book alludes to another book, by the statistician R. A. Fisher, which illustrates the principles of experimental design through the hypothetical question of how to test the claim that it is possible to tell whether tea or milk went into the cup first. The book is nontechnical and gives good verbal descriptions of some of the great work in statistics, the reviewer notes, but the inadequacy of verbal descriptions is sometimes noticeable. The reviewer also believes the author at times exaggerates the importance of statistics in scientific research.
--- Allyn Jackson
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