Early statistics in the Nordic countries – when did the Scandinavians slip behind the British?

Trygve Haavelmo got the Nobel prize in economics (the prize in memory of Alfred Nobel) in 1989 – essentially for his 1944 treatise: “The probability approach to econometrics”, where econometrics eventually was founded on probability and mathematical statistics and where simultaneous equation models were introduced. Haavelmo learned statistics from Frisch, and was influenced by Neyman. Ragnar Frisch was awarded the first Nobel Prize in economics in 1969, together with Jan Tinbergen. Frisch was one of the founders of the Econometric Society. His first papers, including his thesis from 1926, were on Thiele’s semi-invariants. Where had Frisch learned statistics? In the early 20s, Frisch read most of the then available literature on statistics. He studied the Scandinavians: Oppermann, Gram, Thiele, Steffensen and Charlier; continental writers like Bruns, von Mises, de Bruno and Levy; Russians like Chebycheff and Tshuprov; and most of all British statisticians: Karl Pearson, Burton, Yule, Edgeworth, Sheppard, Romanovsky and Fisher. Frisch thought then, apparently, that Britain was the most dynamic arena of statistics. He kept, however, on to the study of the semi-invariants, which were re-invented by Fisher and called cumulants, nearly 30 years later than fully developed and internationally published by Thiele. By presenting my favourite Scandinavian statisticians and scientists with a statistical bend before 1926, I hope to argue that in statistics, Scandinavia was not behind Britain at the turn of the century. The men (they are all men) are presented chronologically, by year of their main contribution. Due to another contribution in the session, Thiele is given less space than he deserves. Hald (1998) presents his contributions, and also those of other mathematical statisticians like Oppermann, Gram and Charlier in full, and he shows how impressive the Copenhagen school was at the turn of the century. There are additional early Nordic statisticians and scientists that deserve mentioning. My selection is subjective, and surely debatable. I have no knowledge of statistics in the Balticum or in the Finnish language.