A. Quetelet as a statistician
type: Item
instance of: scholarly article
title: A. Quetelet as a statistician
zbMATH Open document ID: 0605.01002
DOI: 10.1007/BF00357247
published in: Archive for History of Exact Sciences
publication date: 1986-01-01T00:00:00Z
review text: In 1824 (not 1822!) when Quetelet returned from Paris he was a ''staunch partisan of statistical research''. French mathematicians, esp. J. B. J. Fourier directed Quetelet's attention towards statistics which was in fashion there at that time. Social and official criminal statistics had been published since 1820. Quetelet became a pioneer in anthropometry, he applied statistics to meteorology and sociology, and even after 1859, he worked on mortality tables. He did not introduce any special quantitative rules, but his thoughts contained e.g. a hint at correlation theory. G. U. Yule highly praised Quetelet's reasoning as a forerunner in studying the significance of causes and took the initial letter ''Q'' for his coefficient of association; also F. Galton was strongly influenced, and Karl Pearson praised Quetelet's achievements in organizing official statistics in Belgium and in unifying international statistics. Other different opinions of mathematical minded commentators are cited which reach from ''patriarch of statistics'', ''good mathematical instinct'' to ''rather confused'', ''unable to develop his ideas adequately'', ''gedankenreich aber unmethodisch und daher unphilosophisch'', ''literarisches Machwerk oberflächlicher Art''. The main objections arouse against his ''Average man'' and his hope to study the laws of reproduction and those of the whole world.
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 01A55
Mathematics Subject Classification ID: 62-03
zbMATH DE Number: 3976967
zbMATH Keywords: anthropometry
zbMATH Keywords: statistical methods in sociology
zbMATH Keywords: official statistics
zbMATH Keywords: meteorology
zbMATH Keywords: mortality tables
author: O. B. Sheĭnin
MaRDI profile type: Publication
description: scientific article; zbMATH DE number 3976967