Statistics is a comprehensive science that infers the nature of the measured object and even predicts its future by searching, sorting, analyzing and describing the data. It uses a lot of professional knowledge in mathematics and other disciplines, and its application scope covers almost all fields of social science and natural science.
English statistics of statistics originated from modern Latin statisticum collegium (Congress) and Italian statista (country or politician). German Statistik, first used by Gottfried Achenwall in 1749, stands for the knowledge of analyzing national data, that is, "studying national science". In the19th century, statistics explored its significance in a wide range of data and materials and was introduced to the English-speaking world by John Sinclair.
Statistics is a very old science. It is generally believed that its theoretical research began in Aristotle's time in ancient Greece and has a history of more than 2300 years. It originated from the study of social and economic problems. In the development process of more than 2,000 years, statistics has experienced at least three stages of development: city-state politics, political arithmetic and statistical analysis science. The so-called "mathematical statistics" is not a new discipline independent of statistics. To be exact, it is the general name of all the new methods of collecting and analyzing data formed in the third development stage of statistics. Probability theory is the theoretical basis of mathematical statistics, but it belongs to mathematics rather than statistics.