Gossett Stout Women's Fashion Fit T-shirt

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Our form-fitting send up of the Guinness emblem, dedicated to pioneering statistician and master brewer, William Gosset, gets second looks everywhere it’s worn.

Beer lovers, salute the discoverer of the t-distribution and the two-sample t-test. This shirt is an excellent gift for data scientists, Mstats, statisticians, and six sigma black belts.

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Here are some facts to share when you’re asked about it this rich, full-bodied emblem, which honors science in the workplace.

William Sealy Gosset (RIP) was an Englishman making his name in an Irish brewery, but he was disallowed to use it because Guinness leadership knew that applying statistics in their quality control processes gave them a strategic competitive advantage. It was a closely guarded trade secret. Therefore Gosset published under the pseudonym Student. He published extensively in the theoretical statistics journal, Biometrika.

This self-taught statsman’s journey led him to discover the Poisson distribution on his own 80 years after Siméon Denis Poisson, which Student published in a paper he eloquently titled, “On the Error of Counting with a Haemacytometer.” Tell me about it. Haemacytometers are tricksters.

But it’s Student’s t-test and t-distribution that keeps this humble brewer in our hearts a century later. Our design gives a nod to Karl Pearson, one of the giants upon whose shoulders Gosset stood. It also hints at Gosset’s purpose, which was to develop a method for testing with small samples.

Here's how Karen Lamb and David Farmer, both of Deakin University, put it:

“At the time, statistics relied on what is called ‘large-sample theory,’ which unsurprisingly requires large samples (150 or more) to work. Applying it to problems involving small samples was difficult.

This was the problem that Gosset, a recent graduate of chemistry and mathematics at Oxford University, was keen to address.

In 1906, Gosset, now a self-taught statistician, went to study with Karl Pearson, a leading figure in statistics, at University College London.

Gosset was keen to adapt Pearson’s large-sample methods to deal with the small samples they used at Guinness. There, he developed his ideas and readied them for publication.

However, until the late 1930s, Guinness would not allow employees to publish under their own names for fear that other brewers would learn of their scientific approaches to beer. As a result, Gosset published his most important paper, The Probable Error of a Mean, under the pseudonym ‘Student’ in the journal Biometrika in 1908.”

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Exclusively offered to QI Curiosities customers.

A classic fit in 100% cotton (except for Heather Grey, Dark Heather Grey, Heather Green, and Heather Blue, which contain polyester). Pre-shrunk to make sure your size is maintained throughout several washes.

• 100% combed ringspun cotton
• Heather Grey is 90% combed ringspun cotton and 10% polyester
• Dark Heather Grey, Heather Green, and Heather Blue are 35% combed ringspun cotton and 65% polyester
• Fabric weight: 4.3 oz/yd² (145.8 g/m²)
• 30 singles
• Classic semi-contoured silhouette with side seam
• Tear-away label
• Shoulder-to-shoulder taping
• Seamed collarette
• Double-needle stitched sleeves and bottom hem
• Blank product sourced from Honduras, Haiti, or Nicaragua

This product is made especially for you as soon as you place an order, which is why it takes us a bit longer to deliver it to you. Making products on demand instead of in bulk helps reduce overproduction, so thank you for making thoughtful purchasing decisions!

Size guide

Image by Tim bates - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=71191877