ABSTRACT
The statistical significance test, often used in medicine, is a test of the difference between two mean values. The t-distribution which underlies the test was discovered in 1908 by W S Gosset, who was a brewer working for the Guinness Company. The data which he studied for the t-distribution came from records of the heights of 3000 criminals. Gosset, who published under the pseudonym ‘student’, took 750 samples, each of the heights of four criminals, and used these data to calculate 750 means.
