The t statistic was introduced in 1908 by William Sealy Gosset, a statistician working for the Guinness brewery in Dublin, Ireland (“Student” was his pen name). Gosset had been hired due to Claude Guinness’s innovative policy of recruiting the best graduates from Oxford and Cambridge to apply biochemistry and statistics to Guinness’ industrial processes. Gosset devised the t-test as a way to cheaply monitor the quality of beer. He published the test in Biometrika in 1908, but was forced to use a pen name by his employer, who regarded the fact that they were using statistics as a trade secret. In fact, Gosset’s identity was known to fellow statisticians.
