Tour to the Statistician's Workshop

Abstract

A king going to war wishes to know what reserves of man power and resources he
can call upon. How many men need be put in the field to defeat .the enemy? How
much food could be enough? and what is the cost of all the resources needed? etc.
We are also reminded about ancient statistician's every Christmas when we read
the Bible about the dec~ee of Caesar Augusts that the whole world should be
enrolled. Had it not been for the lousiness of the statisticians, to crowd the enrollees
in that little village, Christ would have been born in the modest comfort of a cottage
in Nazareth. Such events were the earliest problems to apply statistics to. At this
point it is wise to ask one self what statistics and what a statistician is? What tools a
statistician has in his workshop?