2005 Volume 32 Issue 1 Pages 45-67
This paper will overview the history of Hayashi's Quantification Methods (HQM), as a general statistical method and philosophy to obtain scientific information.
The Institute of Statistical Mathematics (ISM) was established by the effort of Japanese statistical mathematicians during the Second World War. The postwar reformation of ISM, especially the establishment of the Department of Social Sciences, linked the traditional theories of statistics with practical social survey. As a result of this linkage, a new statistical approach and method known as HQM was formulated by C. Hayashi in 1950s.
HQM was employed and extended to various fields, especially Marketing Research and Medical Engineering (ME). The education of HQM at the training school for statistical technicians of ISM also played an important role for HQM to be well received.
Conducting a series of studies, statistical researchers gradually formed a new paradigm of statistical research, and it was crystallized as the foundation of Nihon Koudou-keiryo Gakkai (Behaviormetric Society of Japan) in 1973.
The history of Hayashi's studies is the development of his statistical philosophy from “Statistical Mathematics” of 1950s to “Behaviormetrics”, “Multidimensional Data Analysis” of 1970s-1980s “Data Science” since 1990s. His approach and philosophy has been developed by his successors as “the Behaviormetric Studies of Civilization” as an exemplification of “Data Science”.
