Bibliografie

(eng): Currently, an enormous amount of data is available to the humankind in various fields and it is exactly the data (information) which may be transferred to practically useful knowledge. The data are subject to uncertainty and their analysis, i.e. extracting knowledge from the data, requires statistical thinking and statistical methods. Thus, the concept of the knowledge society requiring reliable knowledge to be available to all citizens is heavily depending on statistics. This paper is devoted to an overview of the historical development of basic probabilistic and statistical concepts. Such overview is intended to encourage readers to think anew about statistical ideas in the light of their historical development. The paper recalls that any knowledge obtained by statistical methods is highly probable but not absolutely certain.