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,
