Ronald Fisher in 1913
One hundred years ago, an English lady, Dr Muriel Bristol, amazed some leading statisticians by proving that she could determine by taste the order in which the constituents are poured in a cup of tea. One of the statisticians was Ronald Fisher. The other was William Roach, who was to marry Dr Bristol shortly afterwards.
Many decisions in medicine, economics and other fields depend on carefully designed experiments. For example, before a new treatment is proposed, its efficacy must be established by a series of rigorous tests. Everyone is different, and no one course of treatment is necessarily best in all cases. Statistical evaluation of data is an essential part of the evaluation of new drugs [TM170 or search for “thatsmaths” at irishtimes.com].
A fascinating parallel between a brilliant mathematician and an arch-villain of crime fiction is drawn in a forthcoming book – 
The story of William Rowan Hamilton’s discovery of new four-dimensional numbers called quaternions is familiar. The solution of a problem that had bothered him for years occurred to him in a flash of insight as he walked along the Royal Canal in Dublin. But this Eureka moment did not arise spontaneously: it was the result of years of intense effort. The great French mathematician Henri Poincar
We are reminded each year to get vaccinated against the influenza virus. The severity of the annual outbreak is not known with certainty in advance, but a major pandemic is bound to occur sooner or later. Mathematical models play an indispensable role in 
You must be logged in to post a comment.