The terms are the same, but I cannot outwardly see, whether moments in statistics have something to do with moments in physics.
So are they related?
How?
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Related question: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/17595 – Juho Kokkala Jan 15 '16 at 11:41
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Moments go way back in statistics but the emphasis (indeed over-emphasis) on moments as a unifying idea owes most to Karl Pearson, whose mathematical education and early career included a great deal of work in (Newtonian) mechanics. That was R.A. Fisher's background too as an undergraduate. But the mean being a centre of gravity, and so forth, was known much earlier, at least to Quetelet. It's probably in Gauss's writings too. – Nick Cox Jan 15 '16 at 11:48