W. S. Gossett (“Student”)

William Gossett, was born in England in 1876. He attended New College Oxford where he obtained first-class degrees in both chemistry and mathematics. After graduation in 1899, Gossett secured a position at the Guinness brewery in Dublin, Ireland.

In 1906, he spent time at University College in London studying with the statistician Karl Pearson, who was famous for his work on the correlation coefficient. While at University College, Gossett studied the limits of the Poisson and binomial distributions, the sampling distribution of the mean and standard deviation, and several other topics. When he returned to the brewery, he began his classic studies on the statistics of small samples of data while working in quality control. Because Guinness did not allow employees to publish their work, Gossett began to publish his results under the name “Student.” His most important work on the t test was developed to determine how closely the yeast and alcohol content of various batches of Guinness matched the standard amounts established by the brewery. He discovered the t distribution through mathematical and empirical studies with random numbers. The classic paper on the t test was published under the pseudonym Student in Biometrika, 1908, 6, 1. The t statistic is now often called Student’s t. Gossett’s work is a testimony to the interplay of practical science (quality control of beer) and theoretical research (statistics of small samples).

W. S. Gossett (“Student”)