The Importance of Being Clustered: Uncluttering the Trends of Statistics from 1970 to 2015

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the evolution of statistical research from 1970 to 2015 by clustering papers from top journals to reveal the dynamic trends and main themes in the field.

Contribution

It introduces a dynamic clustering method to organize and track the evolution of statistical research themes over time.

Findings

Statistics is a highly dynamic and evolving science.

Research topics rise, evolve, or decline over time.

The taxonomy reveals key trends and shifts in statistical research.

Abstract

In this paper we retrace the recent history of statistics by analyzing all the papers published in five prestigious statistical journals since 1970, namely: Annals of Statistics, Biometrika, Journal of the American Statistical Association, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, series B and Statistical Science. The aim is to construct a kind of "taxonomy" of the statistical papers by organizing and by clustering them in main themes. In this sense being identified in a cluster means being important enough to be uncluttered in the vast and interconnected world of the statistical research. Since the main statistical research topics naturally born, evolve or die during time, we will also develop a dynamic clustering strategy, where a group in a time period is allowed to migrate or to merge into different groups in the following one. Results show that statistics is a very dynamic and evolving science, stimulated by the rise of new research questions and types of data.