Ineichen, Robert The “Vierfeldertest” of Carl Liebermeister (remarks concerning the development of medical statistics in 19th century). (Der “Vierfeldertest” von Carl Liebermeister (Bemerkungen zur Entwicklung der medizinischen Statistik im 19. Jahrhundert).) (German) Zbl 0802.01006 Hist. Math. 21, No. 1, 28-38 (1994). The test for the comparison of two probabilities as proposed in 1840 by L. D. J. Gavarett (1809-1890) is only applicable when large samples are available. In 1877 the professor of medicine Carl Liebermeister (1833-1901) published a test for small samples using a model of balls drawn from two urns. It is in principle similar but slightly different from R. A. Fisher’s exact test for \(2 \times 2\)-tables (1922). Liebermeister’s formula is correct, its application was too cumbersome for his colleagues and so it received no attention. In 1948, D. J. Finney computed comfortable tables for the evaluation of Fisher’s exact test, they were extended by R. Latscha (1953) and once more by B. M. Bennett and P. Hsu (1963). From a footnote by Liebermeister we learn, that always at that time he read lessons on probability and its application to medicine and science. 16 references. Reviewer: H.Grimm (Jena) Cited in 1 Document MSC: 01A55 History of mathematics in the 19th century 62-03 History of statistics 62F15 Bayesian inference 62P10 Applications of statistics to biology and medical sciences; meta analysis Keywords:L. D. J. Gavarett; R. A. Fisher; D. J. Finney; R. Latscha; B. M. Bennett; P. Hsu; medical statistics; hypothesis testing; Bayesian inference; \(2\times 2\) table; model of two urns and balls; exact test Biographic References: Liebermeister, C. PDFBibTeX XMLCite \textit{R. Ineichen}, Hist. Math. 21, No. 1, 28--38 (1994; Zbl 0802.01006) Full Text: DOI References: [1] Abegg-Liebermeister, M., (Carl Liebermeister (1919), Laupp: Laupp Tübingen) [2] Baumberger, H. 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Its items are heuristically matched to zbMATH identifiers and may contain data conversion errors. In some cases that data have been complemented/enhanced by data from zbMATH Open. This attempts to reflect the references listed in the original paper as accurately as possible without claiming completeness or a perfect matching.