Florence Nightingale: The Passionate Statistician
14th May 2020
Speaker: Professor Steven Julious, University of Sheffield
The Passionate Statistician was
the title given to Florence Nightingale by her first biographer Sir
Edward Cook. Florence Nightingale was a firm believer in the accurate
quantification of evidence to inform decisions. It was her belief in
the accurate collection and presentation of data that informed the work
she undertook to improve military hospitals.
She was of the view
that “to understand God’s thoughts, we must study statistics for these
are the measure of His purpose” and she used her statistical abilities
to inform debates that led to a decline in preventable deaths in
military and civilian hospitals.
This year marks 200 years since
the birth of Florence Nightingale and in this talk I will pay tribute to
her work in statistics and its long lasting impact.