The way in which probability and statistics emerged as a standard part of the curriculum in American higher education is not well understood. While few colleges and universities offered probability and statistics during the early 1900s, both Yale University and Columbia University showed evidence of these courses. This dissertation highlighted curricular changes at both institutions from 1880 until 1950. Some researchers suggest that the two world wars had a significant effect on statistical offerings in postsecondary institutions; others view the wars as simply serving to accelerate trends already apparent. This dissertation sees the latter view as more tenable.

Resources for the study were course descriptions, correspondence, and other materials found in the archives of Yale and Columbia. At Columbia, the search focused on Columbia College and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. At Yale, both Yale College and the Sheffield Scientific School, which housed Yale's undergraduate courses, as well as the Graduate School of Arts and Science were investigated.

As early as the 1880s, both Yale and Columbia offered probability and statistics. Before World War I, Columbia focused on both applications and mathematical derivations; Yale, however, emphasized practical problems. Although the trend continued during the war (1914–1918), the interwar years saw changes at both institutions. By 1920 at Yale, students could study the research applications of statistical methods and the mathematics of statistics. Columbia, too, offered the derivations of statistical procedures, but increased the number of such courses after World War I. By 1945, Columbia had added a Department of Mathematical Statistics, which created opportunities for students to study a greater variety of topics in significantly greater depths. Yale added classes for health science majors which concentrated on the applications of statistics to clinical medicine. While changes occurred during the post World War II years, the changes were not cataclysmic but were, rather, an acceleration of trends which had already been underway.