Secara etimologis kata “statistik” berasal dari kata status (bahasa latin) yang mempunyai
persamaan arti dengan kata state (bahasa Inggris) atau kata staat (bahasa Belanda), dan yang
dalam bahasa Indonesia diterjemahkan menjadi negara. Pada mulanya, kata “statistik”
diartika sebagai “kumpulan bahan keterangan (data), baik yang berwujud angka (data
kuantitatif) maupun yang tidak berwujud angka (data kualitatif), yang mempunyai arti
penting dan kegunaan yang besar bagi suatu negara. Namun, pada perkembangan
selanjutnya, arti kata statistik hanya dibatasi pada “kumpulan bahan keterangan yang
berwujud angka (data kuantitatif)” saja; bahan keterangan yang tidak berwujud angka (data
kualitatif) tidak lagi disebut statistik. dalam kamus bahasa Inggris akan kita jumpai
kata statistics dan kata statistic. Kedua kata itu mempunyai arti yang berbeda.
Kata statistics artinya “ilmu statistik”, sedang kata statisticdiartika sebagai “ukuran yang
diperoleh atau berasal dari sampel,” yaitu sebagai lawan dari kata “parameter” yang berarti
“ukuran yang diperoleh atau berasal dari populasi”.
John Graunt, (born April 24, 1620, London—died April 18, 1674, London), English
statistician, generally considered to be the founder of the science of demography, the
statistical study of human populations. His analysis of the vital statistics of
the London populace influenced the pioneer demographic work of his friend Sir William
Petty and, even more importantly, that of Edmond Halley, the astronomer royal.
A prosperous haberdasher until his business was destroyed in the London fire of 1666,
Graunt held municipal offices and a militia command. While still active as a merchant,
he began to study the death records that had been kept by the London parishes since
1532. Noticing that certain phenomena of death statistics appeared regularly, he was
inspired to write Natural and Political Observations . . . Made upon the Bills
of Mortality (1662). He produced four editions of this work; the third (1665) was
published by the Royal Society, of which Graunt was a charter member.
Graunt classified death rates according to the causes of death, among which he included
overpopulation: he observed that the urban death rate exceeded the rural. He also
found that although the male birth rate was higher than the female, it was offset by a
greater mortality rate for males, so that the population was divided almost evenly
between the sexes. Perhaps his most important innovation was the life table, which
presented mortality in terms of survivorship. Using only two rates of survivorship (to
ages 6 and 76), derived from actual observations, he predicted the percentage of
persons that will live to each successive age and their life expectancy year by year. Petty
was able to extrapolate from mortality rates an estimate of community economic loss
caused by deaths.
Kata Statistik berasal daripada perkataan Latin statisticum
collegium (syarahan mengenai keadaan semasa), manakala dalam bahasa
Itali, statistik berasal daripada perkataan statista, yang bererti "negarawan"
atau "ahli politik".
Daripada dua terjemahan di atas, pastinya tidak terlintas di fikiran kita bahawa
statistik merupakan salah satu cabang matematik yang banyak diaplikasikan
dalam kehidupan seharian tanpa kita sedari.