My comments on the plenay talk of Professor Deidre McCloskey's talk at AAA Annula maaetings 2012

What a wonderful speaker Deidre McCloskey! Reminded me of JR Hicks who also was a stammerer. For an economist, I was amazed by her deep and remarkable understanding of statistics.
It was nice to hear about Gossett, perhaps the only human being who got along well with both Karl Pearson and R.A. Fisher, getting along with the latter itself a Herculean feat.
Gosset was helped in the mathematical derivation of small sample theory by Karl Pearson, he did not appreciate its importance, it was left to his nemesis R.A. Fisher. It is remarkable that he could work with these two giants who couldn't stand each other.
In later life Fisher and Gosset parted ways in that Fisher was a proponent of randomization of experiments while Gosset was a proponent of systematic planning of experiments and in fact proved decisively that balanced designs are more precise, powerful and efficient compared with Fisher's randomized experiments (see http://sites.roosevelt.edu/sziliak/files/2012/02/William-S-Gosset-and-Experimental-Statistics-Ziliak-JWE-2011.pdf )
I remember my father (who designed experiments in horticulture for a living) telling me the virtues of balanced designs at the same time my professors in school were extolling the virtues of randomisation.
In the writings of Gosset we also find seeds of Bayesian thinking.

While I have always had a great regard for Fisher (visit to the tree he planted at the Indian Statistical Institute in Calcutta was for me more of a pilgrimage), I think his influence on the development of statistics was less than ideal.