Natural Inheritance, Volume 42; Volume 590In this book the first statistical study of biological variation and inheritance is represented. Galton used statistical methods and propounded a "law of filial regression". |
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Common terms and phrases
Alphonse de Candolle amount ancestor ancestry Apoplexy appear approximately arithmetic series Artistic Faculty average blend brothers calculated cent child Co-Fraternity columns consumptive corresponding Curve of Frequency dark Deviation disease distribution elements ellipses entries equal Eye-colour Family Faculties Father favour female Filial four Francis Galton Frequency of Error Geometric Mean given Grade grandparents hazel hazel-eyed height hereditary heredity heritage inch individual influence inheritance inquiry John Gray McKendrick Jules Gouffé large number Law of Error law of Frequency less light male marriage selection mean measure mediocre method Mid-Parent Mid-Parental mother Natural Selection Non-Artistic Normal Scheme North Finchley observed pair Pangenesis parents peculiarity population position Prob Probable Error proportion R.F.F. data rank reckoned Record of Family respect Scheme seeds Senile Gangrene shot shown stability statistical Stature successive suppose Table 11 tendency tion transmitted trustworthy value of Q variability variety
Popular passages
Page 62 - Here he introduced what he called the "index of co-relation," later called the correlation coefficient. 5 The Charms of Statistics. — It is difficult to understand why statisticans commonly limit their inquiries to Averages, and do not revel in more comprehensive views. Their souls seem as dull to the charm of variety as that of the native of one of our flat English counties, whose retrospect of Switzerland was that, if its mountains could be thrown into its lakes, two nuisances would be got rid...
Page 95 - However paradoxical it may appear at first sight, it is theoretically a necessary fact, and one that is clearly confirmed by observation, that the stature of the adult offspring must on the whole be more mediocre than the stature of their parents — that is to say, more near to the median stature of the general population.
Page 106 - Mid-Parent, and still fewer would differ as widely as the more exceptional of the two Parents. The more bountifully the Parent is gifted by nature, the more rare will be his good fortune if he begets a son who is as richly endowed as himself, and still more so if he has a son who is endowed yet more largely.
Page 9 - We appear, then, to be severally built up out of a host of minute particles of whose nature we know nothing, any one of which may be derived from any one progenitor, but which are usually transmitted in aggregates, considerable groups being derived from the same progenitor. It would seem that while the embryo is developing itself, the particles more or less qualified for each new post wait as it were in competition, to obtain it. Also that the particle that succeeds, must owe its success partly to...
Page 102 - I may be permitted to say that I never felt such a glow of loyalty and respect towards the sovereignty and magnificent sway of mathematical analysis as when his answer reached me, confirming, by purely mathematical reasoning, my various and laborious statistical conclusions with far more minuteness than I had dared to hope; for the original data ran somewhat roughly, and I had to smooth them with tender...
Page 66 - The law would have been personified by the Greeks and deified, if they had known of it. It reigns with serenity and in complete self-effacement amidst the wildest confusion. The huger the mob, and the greater the apparent anarchy, the more perfect is its sway. It is the supreme law of Unreason. Whenever a large sample of chaotic elements are taken in hand and marshalled in the order of their magnitude, an unsuspected and most beautiful form of regularity proves to have been latent all along.
Page 135 - Hence the influence, pure and simple, of the mid-parent may be taken as ^, of the midgrandparent £, of the mid-great-grandparent ^, and so on.
Page 197 - If one of the couples consist of two gifted members of a poor stock, and the other of two ordinary members of a gifted stock, the difference between them will betray itself in their offspring. The children of the former will tend to regress ; those of the latter will not.
Page 55 - But Errors, Differences, Deviations, Divergencies, Dispersions, and individual Variations, all spring from the same kind of causes. Objects that bear the same name, or can be described by the same phrase, are thereby acknowledged to have common points of resemblance, and to rank as members of the same species, class, or whatever else we may please to call the group. On the other hand, every object has Differences peculiar to itself, by which it is distinguished from others. This general statement...
Page 239 - Fechner's law, in its approximative and simplest form of sensation = log stimulus, tells us that a series of tints, in which the quantities of white scattered on a black ground are as 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, &c., will appear to the eye to be separated by equal intervals of tint. Therefore, in matching a grey that contains 8 portions of white, we are just as likely to err by selecting one that has 16 portions as one that has 4 portions.