Florence Nightingale is remembered as a pioneer of nursing and a reformer of hospitals. She herself saw her mission in larger terms: to serve humanity through the prevention of needless illness and death. For much of her long life (1820-1910) she pursued this mission with a fierce determination that gave everything she did a singular coherence. Her greatest contributions were undoubtedly her efforts to reform the British military health-care system and her establishment, through the founding of training programs and the definitions of sound professional standards, of nursing as a respected profession. Much of what now seems basic in modern health case can be traced to the 19th century. Less well known, because it has been neglected by her biogrpahers, is her equally pioneering use of the new advanced techniques of statistical analysis in those battles.
The CAUSE Research Group is supported in part by a member initiative grant from the American Statistical Association’s Section on Statistics and Data Science Education