Maindonald, JohnRichardson, Alice2015-12-132015-12-131069-1898http://hdl.handle.net/1885/87211On her death in 1910, Florence Nightingale left a vast collection of reports, letters, notes and other written material. There are numerous publications that make use of this material, often highlighting Florence's attitude to a particular issue. In this paper we gather a set of quotations and construct a dialogue with Florence Nightingale on the subject of statistics. Our dialogue draws attention to strong points of connection between Florence Nightingale's use of statistics and modern evidence-based approaches to medicine and public health. We offer our dialogue as a memorable way to draw the attention of students to the key role of data-based evidence in medicine and in the conduct of public affairs.Copyright © 2004 by John Maindonald and Alice M. Richardson, all rights reserved. This text may be freely shared among individuals, but it may not be republished in any medium without express written consent from the authors and advance notification of the editor. The authors requested open access.Keywords: Evidence-based medicine; History of statistics; Statistics education20042015-12-12