Introduction to Fisher (1926) The Arrangement of Field Experiments

In 1919, the Director of Rothamsted Experimental Station, Sir John Russell, invited Ronald Aylmer Fisher, a young mathematician with interests in evolution and genetics, to join the small group of scientists at Rothamsted in order that [see Russell (1966, p. 327)] “after studying our records he should tell me whether they were suitable for proper statistical examination and might be expected to yield more information than we had extracted.” Fisher accepted the invitation and in a very short time Russell realized (loc. cit.) “that he was more than a man of great ability; he was in fact a genius who must be retained.” In the few years that followed, Fisher introduced the subdivision of sums of squares now known as an analysis of variance (anova) table (1923), derived the exact distribution of the (log of the) ratio of two independent chi-squared variates (1924), introduced the principles of blocking and randomization. as well as the randomized block, Latin square, and split-plot experiments, the latter with two anova tables (1925), promoted factorial experiments, and foreshadowed the notion of confounding (1926). Of course Fisher made many contributions to theoretical statistics over this same period [see Fisher (1922)], but the above relate directly to the design and analysis of field experiments, the topic of the paper that follows. It was an incredibly productive period for Fisher, with his ideas quickly transforming agricultural experimentation in Great Britain and more widely, and in major respects these ideas have remained the statistical basis of agricultural experimentation to this day.