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The "Nuova Cronica", a 14th century history of Florence by the Florentine banker and official Giovanni Villani, includes

much statistical information on populat ion, ordinances, commerce and trade, education, and religious facilities and has been described as the first introduction of statistics as a positive element in history,[2] though neither the term nor the concept of statistics as a specific field yet existed. By the 18th century, the term "statistics" designated the systematic collection of demographic and economic data by states. In the early 19th century, the meani ng of "statistics" broadened, then including the discipline concerned with the c ollection, summary, and analysis of data. Today statistics is widely employed in government, business, and all the sciences. Electronic computers have expedited statistical computation, and have allowed statisticians to develop "computer-in tensive" methods. The term "mathematical statistics" designates the mathematical theories of proba bility and statistical inference, which are used in statistical practice. The re lation between statistics and probability theory developed rather late, however. In the 19th century, statistics increasingly used probability theory, whose ini tial results were found in the 17th and 18th centuries, particularly in the anal ysis of games of chance (gambling). By 1800, astronomy used probability models a nd statistical theories, particularly the method of least squares, which was inv ented by Legendre and Gauss. Early probability theory and statistics was systema tized and extended by Laplace; following Laplace, probability and statistics hav e been in continual development. In the 19th century, social scientists used sta tistical reasoning and probability models to advance the new sciences of experim ental psychology and sociology; physical scientists used statistical reasoning a nd probability models to advance the new sciences of thermodynamics and statisti cal mechanics. The development of statistical reasoning was closely associated w ith the development of inductive logic and the scientific method. Statistics is not a field of mathematics but an autonomous mathematical science, like computer science or operations research. Unlike mathematics, statistics ha d its origins in public administration and maintains a special concern with demo graphy and economics. Being concerned with the scientific method and inductive l ogic, statistical theory has close association with the philosophy of science; w ith its emphasis on learning from data and making best predictions, statistics h as great overlap with the decision science and microeconomics. With its concerns with data, statistics has overlap with information science and computer science .

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