1839

The ASA was formed at a meeting in the rooms of the American Education Society in Boston and was chartered by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Present at the organizing meeting were William Cogswell, teacher, fundraiser for the ministry, and genealogist; Richard Fletcher, lawyer and U.S. representative; John Dix Fisher, physician and pioneer in medical reform; Oliver Peabody, lawyer, clergyman, poet, and editor; and Lemuel Shattuck, statistician, genealogist, publisher, and author of perhaps the most significant single document in the history of public health to that date.

1964

On November 27, 1964, the American Statistical Association celebrated its 125th anniversary in Boston. The one-day meeting started with afternoon sessions, including a talk by John Tukey: “The Technical Tools of Statistics: Past, Present, and Future.” An after-dinner session was chaired by Frederick Mosteller, and the cost to attend the entire one-day event was $15.

1989

During the March 1988 board meeting, the ASA Board of Directors passed a motion to unanimously designate November 1989 as National Statistics Month. To commemorate the sesquicentennial and in conjunction with National Statistics Month, a symposium called “Statistics—A Guide to Assessing Societal Risk” was held on November 29, 1989, at the National Academy of Sciences complex in Washington, DC. Paul Meier, James Ware, Lester Lave, and Peter Preuss were present.

Famous November Birthdays

William Farr, George Gallup, Erich Leo Lehmann, and Leonard Jimmie Savage