Leon Isserlis and the JRSS review of the 1st edition of
John
Aldrich,
Introduction
There
were six major reviews of the first edition. One appears here and the other
five are available as follows:
- E. S. Pearson’s review in Science Progress.
- Student’s review in the Eugenics Review.
- Harold Hotelling’s review in JASA.
- Nature review
- BMJ review
All the reviews are worth consulting for each gives a different perspective on the book. See these other sites for further literature and links.
Leon Isserlis reviewed
Fisher’s Statistical Methods for
the Journal of the Royal Statistical Society.
The statisticians the society represented were economic and social
statisticians and “research workers” in biology published elsewhere. However,
Fisher published three papers in the journal in 1922-4 and the journal reviewed
his book. A decade later the society broadened its ‘state-istics’ agenda and welcomed work on agriculture and
industry and on mathematical statistics.
Isserlis and Fisher
Isserlis’s main interest in statistical theory was in the exact distribution of sample moments. With his Russian background his unique contribution to British statistics was to bring Russian work to the attention of British statisticians; the comment in his review on Fisher’s neglect of Chebyshev’s work is characteristic. In fact, Fisher knew about Chebyshev polynomials and Isserlis knew that Fisher knew for Fisher had been present at a meeting of the Statistical Society (see Yule (1921)) when Isserlis’s friend Major Greenwood described them. Fisher later (1930) answered a similar charge from Grove by saying he had never put forward the technique as his own discovery because it was obvious—“no mathematician considering the same problem … could have failed to introduce orthogonal functions…” Besides nothing was to be gained now from reading Chebyshev! Chebyshev (and perhaps Isserlis) remained a sore point with Fisher. In a letter to Aitken in November 1932 he wrote, “The fact is that it has always been a cheap way of maintaining a shaky reputation for expert knowledge, to quote some foreigner unknown to most of one’s countryman, as of the highest importance. Russians have done long and fruitful service in this respect, owing to their admirably inaccessible language. When you find me browbeating an audience with Japanese authorities, you will recognise the first signs of decrepitude.”
Isserlis had a long association with the Royal Statistical Society and Fisher had a long dis-association from it. Fisher’s relations with the society soured when it would not publish a paper of his in 1923; see Box (1978, pp. 86-7 and Bennett pp. 76-7). In 1935 a reconciliation was in prospect when Fisher presented a paper to a meeting of the society. Bowley proposed the vote of thanks and Isserlis seconded it (pp. 57-9). However no reconciliation was achieved. Fisher replied, “The acerbity, to use no stronger term, with which the customary vote of thanks has been moved and seconded … does not, I confess surprise me.”
References
- The first edition of Statistical Methods for Research Workers is available on Christopher Green’s Classics in the History of Psychology website.
- For a perspective on
Fisher’s book see A. W. F. Edwards, (2005) “
·
J. O. Irwin
(1966), Leon Isserlis, M.A., D.Sc. (1881-1966), Journal
of the Royal Statistical Society A, 129,
612-616. JSTOR
·
M. G. Kendall (1967) Leon Isserlis, 1881-1966, Revue
de l'Institut International de Statistique / Review
of the International Statistical Institute, 35, 105-106. When Isserlis retired
from the Chamber of Shipping Kendall replaced him.
·
V. Farewell, T. Johnson & P. Armitage (2006)
‘A Memorandum on the Present Position and Prospects of Medical Statistics and
Epidemiology’ by Major Greenwood, Statistics in Medicine, 25, 2167-2177. (Describes
·
Joan Fisher
· G. U. Yule (1921) On the Time-Correlation Problem, with Especial Reference to the Variate-Difference Correlation Method, with discussion, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 84, 497-537. JSTOR
· L. Isserlis (1927) Two Notes on Certain Expansions in Orthogonal and Semi-Orthogonal Functions: I Note on Chebysheff’s Interpolation Formula (Note II is by Romanovsky), Biometrika, 19, 87-99. JSTOR
·
Charles C. Grove (1930) Statistical
Methods for Research Workers 3rd edition (
·
·
J. H. Bennett (1983) (ed.) Natural Selection, Heredity, and Eugenics. Including Selected
Correspondence of
·
·
J. Aldrich (2010) Mathematics in
the London/Royal Statistical Society 1834-1934 Journal Electronique d'Histoire des Probabilités et de la Statistique has more on Fisher’s relations with the RSS.
·
For more on Fisher generally, see A Guide to R. A. Fisher.
- For many of the important
figures see my Figures
from the History of Probability and Statistics (534
Kb) This also has references on the History of
Statistics.
________________________________________________________________________
L.I. (1926) Review of Statistical
Methods for Research Workers (
Statistical
Methods for Research Workers. By
This book is No. 3 of the Biological Monographs and Manuals, edited by F. A. E. Crow and D. Ward Cutler and, as indicated by the Editors’ preface, has a dual aim. It is intended on the one hand, to provide an authoritative record of achievement in a particular branch of biological investigation and, on the other hand, to give the author an opportunity of expressing the results of his own researches in a more extended form. On the whole the second aim seems dominant, and we have presented a very full account of the statistical methods favoured by the author and of the conclusions he has reached on topics some of which are still in the controversial stage. Much is lacking if the book is to be regarded as an authoritative record of achievement in statistical method apart from Mr. Fisher’s own contributions. The explanation may be found in the author’s preface where he says, “Little experience is sufficient to show that the traditional machinery of statistical processes is wholly unsuited to the needs of practical research. Not only does it take a cannon to shoot a sparrow, but it misses the sparrow.” The task of reviewing the book is not made any easier by the fact that it is apparently addressed to the intelligent biologist, who is assumed to be able to [p. 146] handle mathematical formulae, but is spared the exercise of following a mathematical proof. We thus find in the earlier chapters excellent, if dogmatic statements about binomial distributions, Poisson’s series and the normal law, to which no exception can be taken by those who work the “traditional machinery.” Side by side with these statements we find others equally dogmatic about maximum likelihood and similar topics without warning to the non-mathematical reader that he is no longer on terra firma. In the sections in the earlier chapters dealing with distributions, goodness of fit, independence and so forth, the author explains clearly the use and meaning of the χ2 test and provides simple tables for the purpose. Chapter V, on means and regression coefficients, is full of good matter, but the author, here as elsewhere, is very economical in his references to earlier work. A notable example is his description of the technique of fitting regression lines by least squares, so that each new approximation is a mere extension of the earlier stages. In this description there is no reference to Tchebysheff's work. A clear account of the usefulness of the product-moment coefficients is given in Chapter VI. Mr. Fisher's sympathies are obviously with Mendelian methods, and the following quotation is therefore interesting: “but even with organisms suitable for experiment and measurement, it is only in the most favourable cases that the several factors causing fluctuating variability can be resolved, and their effects studied by Mendelian methods. Such fluctuating variability, with an approximately normal distribution, is characteristic of the useful qualities of domestic plants and animals; and although there is strong reason to think that inheritance in such cases is ultimately Mendelian, the biometrical method of study is at present alone capable of holding out hopes of immediate progress.”
This chapter deals also with the
partial correlation and with the transformation devised by the author, z
= 
which simplifies the study of the
distribution of r in small samples. Chapter VII is devoted to the study
of intra-class correlations and their sampling errors, and a final chapter deals
with the analysis of variance. Here the author uses the ideas underlying the
correlation ratio but dismisses the ratio itself as a descriptive statistic the
use of which is extremely limited. The book will undoubtedly prove of great
value to research workers whose statistical series necessarily consist of small
samples, but will prove a hard nut to crack for biologists who attempt to use
it as a first introduction to statistical method.
