Karl Pearson and the Establishment of Mathematical Statistics

Abstract

Summary At the end of the nineteenth century, the content and practice of statistics underwent a series of transitions that led to its emergence as a highly specialised mathematical discipline. These intellectual and later institutional changes were, in part, brought about by a mathematical‐statistical translation of Charles Darwin's redefinition of the biological species as something that could be viewed in terms of populations. Karl Pearson and W.F.R. Weldon's mathematical reconceptualisation of Darwinian biological variation and “statistical” population of species in the 1890s provided the framework within which a major paradigmatic shift occurred in statistical techniques and theory. Weldon's work on the shore crab in Naples and Plymouth from 1892 to 1895 not only brought them into the forefront of ideas of speciation and provided the impetus to Pearson's earliest statistical innovations, but it also led to Pearson shifting his professional interests from having had an established career as a mathematical physicist to developing one as a biometrician. The innovative statistical work Pearson undertook with Weldon in 1892 and later with Francis Galton in 1894 enabled him to lay the foundations of modern mathematical statistics. While Pearson's diverse publications, his establishment of four laboratories and the creation of new academic departments underscore the plurality of his work, the main focus of his life‐long career was in the establishment and promulgation of his statistical methodology.

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