Enter William Sealy Gosset, a
young chemist at the Guinness
Brewery in Dublin, Ireland.
Gosset's job was to
improve the beer without
having to raise the price.
That meant doing
experiments to identify
things like the best ingredients.
But those experiments took time,
and they cost money, so Gosset
had to figure out ways of
extracting useful conclusions
from just a few
small-scale studies.
The company was so keen on
his efforts that it gave him a
year-long sabbatical to
research statistics in London.
Their decision paid off.
Gosset developed a technique for
drawing conclusions from very
small studies; making statistics
a useful and affordable way for
Guinness to
improve its products.
For instance: presented with two
shipments of hops, Gosset could
tell if one was better
than the other by
testing just a few samples.
And he knew how confident
he could be in his results.
The company was so impressed
by Gosset's breakthrough
that they didn't really want other
breweries to learn about it.
Nevertheless, they let him
publish his work anonymously.
Gosset chose the
alias "Student."
So his technique became known
as "Student's t-test," and it's
still used by scientists
all over the world.
