Is statistics too difficult?

By means of several historical examples, it is shown that it does not appear to be easy to build bridges between rigorous mathematics and reasonable data‐analytic procedures for scientific measurements. After mentioning both some positive and some negative aspects of statistics, a formal framework for statistics is presented which contains the concept formation, derivation of results and interpretation of mathematical statistics as three essential steps. The difficulties especially of interpretation are shown for examples in several areas of statistics, such as asymptotics and robustness. Some problems of statistics in two subject‐matter sciences are discussed, and a summary and outlook are given.

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