“It was a summer afternoon in Cambridge, England, in the late 1920s. A group of university dons, their wives, and some guests were sitting around an outdoor table for afternoon tea. One of the women was insisting that tea tasted different depending upon whether the tea was poured into the milk or whether the milk was poured into the tea. The scientific minds among the men scoffed at this as sheer nonsense. What could be the difference? They could not conceive of any difference in the chemistry of the mixtures that could exist. A thin, short man, with thick glasses and a Vandyke beard beginning to turn grey, pounced on the problem.”

From: The Lady Tasting Tea. How statistics revolutionised science in the twentieth century. – David Salsburg (Chapter 1)

The thick-glassed man was nobody else than Ronald Fisher and as the story goes, this particular afternoon lay the foundation for his work on experimental design and statistical tests to accommodate sources of variation.

Summertime is the ideal time for some reading and before the academic year really kicks off, may we suggest to branch out to a book that is about statistics but is not a statistical textbook per se.

The lady tasting tea by David Salsburg is highly readable and accessible with lots of funny moments. Its premise is to walk you through the major statistical developments in the 20th century that shaped science as we know it today. Rather than being a dry summary of events, it gives you insight in the colourful characters of those times and you will recognise many names of statistical tests you know today (e.g. the aforementioned Fisher, but also Pearson). You will even learn about a pivotal early study on the capacity of a small beer cask in the Guinness brewery.

Statistics are often regarded as dry and mathematical. However, if you take a little bit of time to learn about their history and origin, the context may help you understand better why we still need them in today’s research.

And context is everything. Understanding the context in which a certain statistical method came to be, will assist you in judging whether that particular technique also applies to the context of your research. Are you asking a similar question? Do your data share characteristics? If not, how was that technique approved upon to accommodate those differences?

Having a background understanding of the area of statistics will benefit your research outcomes. This book definitely has the potential to contribute to that understanding and is an easy read on a warm (or rainy) summer night with a cup of tea.