The curse of statistics
Statistics, incorrectly classified often as a branch of Mathematics, was born in the 17th century, matured in the 18th and raised hell in the 19th. It took firm hold in economics, engineering, policy and medicine in the last century and it single handedly ushered in an era of experimentalism and empiricism. Its influence on science and technology has been so high that it has successfully delegated abstract thinking to non-scientific status. Its influence on the scientific intelligentsia is so complete that for the past several decades, not a single theory or insight has emerged without the heavy use of statistics.
Hypothesis testing has become synonymous with the scientific process and education systems around the world are designed to inculcate the next generation with the basic belief that it is the fountain of knowledge – the more one imbibes, the smarter one will be. The more data one collects, analyzes, interprets and presents – the more likely that new insights will be created. Better and faster data collection machines are being built across all fields – from high energy physics to business management – based on the singular belief that the tamed dragon, statistics, has a growing appetite for data. Academics have whole heartedly accepted this as papers are manufactured by simply collecting data and feeding it to the statistics machine in the basement. The advent of computers exponentially increased the size and scope of data collection mechanisms, providing further boost to the statistical processes of discovery and invention.
At the heart of statistics is the beautiful bell curve – the shape of which is incredibly intoxicating to contemporary scientists. Granted, it has nice mathematical properties – but more importantly, it provides significant flexibility to prove hypotheses. It has remained remarkably loyal to anybody who wants to use it – to prove or disprove something. It has been the workhorse in the labs, factory floors, trading floors, atom smashers – any where a hypothesis can be created. Its use is so prevalent that even TV pundits cannot put two sentences together without sighting it. Policy makers everywhere are literally consumed by it as they cut, dice and stuff data to every accessible part of the remarkably well digesting bell curve, in an attempt to make the world a better place. It is truly the entity that drove humanity out of the dark ages and today, it is indeed the first required course in most pursuits of knowledge.
Where would humanity be today without statistics? Would we have failed to invent all the technological and medical gadgets that made life easier for some? Would we have remarkably reduced the number of academic publications of irrelevance? Or would we have advanced humanity to a different level of understanding?
