Efron's Development of the Bootstrap
Overview
Powerful computer-based data-analysis techniques referred to by statisticians as "bootstrap statistics" allow mathematicians, scientists, and scholars working with problems in statistics to determine, with great accuracy, the reliability of data. The techniques, invented in 1977 by Stanford University mathematician Bradley Efron,allow statisticians to analyze data, draw conclusions about data, and make predictions from smaller, less complete samples of data. Bootstrap techniques have found wide use in almost all fields of scholarship, including subjects as diverse as politics, economics, biology, and astrophysics.
Background
Almost all of the research and innovation in statistics during the last two decades of the twentieth century was a result of, or was deeply influenced by, the increasing availability and power of computers. In 1979, Efron's important and seminal article titled "Computers and Statistics: Thinking the Unthinkable" argued that statistical methods once thought absurd because of the large number of calculations required, would—given the growth of computing—soon be common mathematical tools. Subsequently, Efron's Bootstrap, a technique involving resampling an initial set of data thousands of times, did indeed become a standard tool of statistical analysis.
Descriptive statistics is a branch of mathematics concerned, in general, with determining quantities, means (averages), and other characteristics of a set of data.
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