Talk:List of important publications in statistics

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tabulation[edit]

just idea - maybe tabulated info is better?

Statistics Publication Author Publication data (publisher, year, (ed.), ISSN/ISBN) Online version Annotation Importance Intro / Topic creator / Breakthrough / Influence
Probability The Doctrine of Chances :Author: Abraham de Moivre :Publication data: 1738 (2nd ed.) :Online version: ? :Description: The book introduced the concept of normal distributions as approximations to binomial distributions. In effect, de Moivre proved a weak version of the central limit theorem. Sometimes his result is called the theorem of de Moivre-Laplace. :Importance: Topic creator, Breakthrough, Influence

We can check the use of tables but I’m not sure they are appropriate. I tried using tables in the first version of the List of publications in computer science. Editing the list was a bit problematic, especially to new users. Some of the most important contributions to the list are from anonymous users and I wouldn’t like to make their work harder. In the long term, I hope to have an article in wikipedia for each publication. Maybe then we will be able to use summary tables. APH 07:48, 15 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Standards in all the Wikipedia:WikiProject Science pearls articles[edit]

List of publications in biology was put up for deletion at AfD but survived the process as there was no consensus. However, as someone who has been concerned with this Wikipedia:WikiProject Science pearls project for some months now, I am concerned. There is indeed a case that the material here is not free of a POV. How do we determine importance? Earlier this year the participants on List of publications in chemistry debated this and decided on two matters. First, they tightened up the criteria for inclusion, in particular insisted that publications that were important as an introduction had to have had a wider importance such as altering the way all future text books were written or altered the way the subject was taught. Second, they decided that all new entries should be raised for debate over a 10 day period on the talk page to determine whether they should be kept or deleted. Most existing entries were debated and several were deleted. This has worked reasonably well although it would be better if more people had participated. It is clear enough that it is not, for these articles, sufficient to allow anyone to add entries, as only very obvious nonsense is likely to be deleted. Each entry needs the consideration of several editors. I urge all interested in this project to look at what the chemists here have done and consider whether something similar or even better can be used on all pages in the project. I am putting this paragraph on all the other talk pages of this project. --Bduke 08:38, 22 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Related AFD[edit]

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of publications in biology (2nd nomination) Kappa 08:20, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The criteria for entries[edit]

Please take a look at a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Science pearls#Header template to all project list pages on rewording the template that generates the header to this list of publications to make the criteria for entries to the list rather tighter and better reflecting the notability criteria of WP. The motivation is to better take into account comments that have been made when some of these lists have been proposed for deletion. --Bduke 00:36, 17 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Categories of important publications[edit]

Please note Wikipedia:WikiProject Science pearls##Categories of important publications. Thanks, APH 10:27, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Cleanup[edit]

I added a cleanup tag to the article since the listed items do not appear to have a uniform criteria for inclusion applied. Moreover, what is and is not a good introduction to a topic is inherently pov, so should probably not be included at all (I have already removed one section on introductory probability. The "latest and greatest" criteria should also be removed, I would think, stemming from WP:NOT sense that it is not the place for news. If the publication is important in statistics, it is probably should be timelessly important. In short, some work is probably needed. --TeaDrinker 01:24, 2 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think textbooks in general should be on here. It would probably be better, anyway, to take this article down and roll it into a "History of Probability Theory" article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Guyminuslife (talk • contribs) 10:02, 8 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. It is most unsightly, and at odds with WP:MOS (widespread linking of headings).--Adoniscik (talk) 00:22, 16 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Suggestions[edit]

One way to define "important" publications is simply by the number of citations for that publication. For example, here are some VERY rough counts of citations as determined by scholar.google.com:

10739 : Dempster, Laird & Rubin. The estimation of missing data via EM.
5000 : Steele & Torrie. Principles & Procedures of Statistics.
3411 : Tukey. Exploratory Data Analysis
2549 : Venables & Ripley. Modern Applied Statistics with S.
2544 : Tufte. Visual Display of Quantitative Information. (Not explicitly statistics)
1800 : Fisher. The Design of Experiments.
843 : Harrell. Regression Modeling Strategies.

I seem to recall reading that the Dempster, Laird & Rubin paper was one of the most widely-cited articles in all science publications, let alone in statistics. I don't have a source for that, however.

Here is a list of Most-cited statistical papers: [1]. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 170.54.58.5 (talk) 19:17, 17 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Probability[edit]

  • De ratiociniis in ludo aleae (1657, by Christiaan Huygens) — not even mentioned, although it was probably the first serious tract on the probability theory.
  • The Doctrine of Chances — undoubtedly the important publication, however the abstract is wrong. The book neither introduced the concept of normal distributions (see the article for detailed account of that distribution’s history), nor proved “a weak version of the central limit theorem” (make sure not to look at the CLT article, because it repeats this mistake). It does prove the “weak form” of the theorem of de Moivre-Laplace, however it's in the 2nd edition only. The majority of the book is devoted to entirely different problems, which I'm not able to summarize.
  • Théorie analytique des probabilités — it certainly would be nice to provide a link to an English translation of the book, after all not everybody on English wikipedia knows French... It is likely the abstract is not entirely correct either. At least from reading Stigler I remember that Laplace introduced the double-exponential distribution in 1784, and the question of the prerogative for the least squares method is not that simple either. At least Gauss published his detailed treatise of the subject in 1809 (Gauss’s book isn’t even mentioned in this section).

 // stpasha »  23:41, 1 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I removed some references on probability that are not essentially statistics books. There is another list of probability articles: Kolmogorov's work on Bayesian sufficiency or on Kolmogorov information or on time series would certainly be landmark in statistics, of course. I hope that this is acceptable. Kiefer.Wolfowitz (talk) 00:54, 2 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
What was meant by "There is another list of probability articles"? If this referred to a list of probabilty publications corresponding to the statistics one here (i.e. important publications), there does not seem to be one now. The section on probability theory in List of important publications in mathematics just points to this article. Melcombe (talk) 09:20, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A possible inclusion would be A Treatise on Probability, given what is said in that article. Melcombe (talk) 09:12, 16 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Move[edit]

I recently moved this page to Bibliography of statistics.

What reasons not to do this are there?Curb Chain (talk) 14:50, 3 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

For exactly the same reasons put forward by other discussants in Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Bibliographies. This article is not a bibliography. The "List of important publications..." format is well-established. There was no prior discussion on this talk page. If a separate article "Bibliography of statistics" is required then it would be very different from this one as the items presently included have been carefully considered and justified. Don't hijack existing articles for other purposes. If a small clique of people want to introduce a new policy on Wikipedia they should go about it rather more carefully than this. Melcombe (talk) 09:54, 4 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Please don't identify Curb Chain's actions with WikiProject Bibliographies. He is a loose cannon who in no way represents the views of the rest of us. I hope his actions will not prejudice editors against the WikiProject, the members of which are not a clique and do not wish to impose our policies on anyone. However, the project is potentially a good response to all these recent AfDs. Unlike "List of important X", "Bibliography" is a recognized form of list. Contrary to a popular impression, bibliographies do not have to be indiscriminate, or even very different from what you have now. In fact, WikiProject Science pearls, which crafted the template for your current inclusion criteria, is now a task force in WikiProject Bibliographies.
As for naming pages, we think the name of the page is much less important than what is on the page. Have a look at Bibliography of biology for how this page might look. Of course, there is no need to rename the list before making any changes RockMagnetist (talk) 00:52, 8 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed selection criteria[edit]

A perennial issue on this and similar pages is how to set criteria for the list. I have carefully considered existing guidelines and tried to craft a broad set of policies that satisfy them. I have posted it on the Science pearls talk page. I would welcome your comments. Of course, these guidelines are not intended to be binding for any particular page, but might help you choose your own selection criteria. RockMagnetist (talk) 00:53, 8 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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