Karl Pearson: A Reader’s Guide
This website There is a large and scattered literature on the
work and life of Karl Pearson (1857-1936), applied mathematician, philosopher of science, biometrician, statistician, eugenist and contributor to “the woman’s question.” This guide contains a biography of Karl
Pearson and a bibliography. It lists writings by statisticians, geneticists,
several varieties of historian—of science, of politics, of social thought, of
feminism, of literature—and sociologists of science. It tries to accommodate
different interests and levels of sophistication. However the coverage is
neither exhaustive nor uniform and the emphasis is on the history of
statistics.
Key concepts
and people: Bayes’ Theorem, biometry, χ2 goodness of
fit, correlation, elasticity, eugenics, feminism, method of moments, Pearson
curves, regression, socialism; Karl Pearson, William Bateson, Ronald Fisher,
Francis Galton, William Sealy Gosset (“Student”),
Major Greenwood, John Maynard Keynes, Jerzy Neyman,. Egon Sharpe Pearson,
Maria Sharpe, Olive Schreiner, W. F.
Links This guide has external links to
free sites,
like the MacTutor
History of Mathematics Archive or Wikipedia
and to subscriber
sites, like JSTO
Thanks to P. J. Bowler, A. W. F. Edwards, P.
M. Lee, M. E. Magnello, T. M. Porter and S. M.
Stigler for suggestions.
John Aldrich,
