The Birth of Statistics
The birth of statistics occurred in mid-17th century. A commoner, named John Graunt, who was a native of London, begin reviewing a weekly church publication issued by the local parish clerk that listed the number of births, christenings, and deaths in each parish. These so called Bills of Mortality also listed the causes of death. Graunt who was a shopkeeper organized these data in the forms we call descriptive statistics which was published as Natural and Political Observation Made upon the Bills of Mortality. Shortly he was elected as a member of Royal Society. Thus, statistics has to borrow some concepts from sociology such as the concept of "Population". It has been argued that since it usually involves the study of human behavior therefore it cannot claim the precision of the physical sciences.
Probability has much longer history, it originated from the study of games of chance and gambling during the sixteenth onwards. Probability theory as a branch of mathematics studies by Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat in the seventeenth century. In this century probabilistic argument is used to control the flow of traffic through a highway system, a telephone interchange, or a computer processor; find the genetic makeup of individuals or populations; quality control; insurance; investment; and other sectors of business and industry.
New and ever growing diverse fields of humans activities are using statistics, however, it seems that this field itself remains an obscure field to the public. Professor Bradley Efron expressed this fact nicely:
For the history of probability, and history of statistics, visit History of Statistics Material.
Further Reading: