Philosophical foundations of statistics
Other Statistics
2026-03-05 v1
Abstract
The philosophical foundations of statistics involve issues in theoretical statistics, such as goals and methods to meet these goals, and interpretation of the meaning of inference using statistics. They are related to the philosophy of science and to the philosophy of probability. We review the core and partly interrelated themes and place them in context.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2603.03828,
title = {Philosophical foundations of statistics},
author = {Inge G. Helland and Nils Lid Hjort and Gunnar Taraldsen},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.03828},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
7 pages, no figures; Statistical Research Report, Department of Mathematics, University of Oslo, February 2023, but now arXiv'd March 2026. The article has appeared in International Encyclopedia of Statistical Science 2024, pages 1894-1899, Springer, at this url: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/978-3-662-69359-9_471.pdf