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Abstract:
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The American Statistical Association, especially at its inception, emphasized the first word in the organization's name, being founded in 1839, among other reasons, to support the 1840 Census. No such lineage and linkage between ASA and national defense has been traced so far to a specific past 19th Century event. Nonetheless, while ASA was set up primarily for peaceful pursuits, it played a wartime role as science and statistical thinking increasingly permeated government decisionmaking in the 19th and early 20th Century. The emphasis in the paper will be on such figures as Florence Nightingale, Solomon Kullback, Mort Kupperman, Sam Wilks, and Abraham Wald. I will leave to other speakers more recent applications of our profession to national defense and homeland security.
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