The End of the Statistical Movement

Abstract

Abstract Francis Galton’s genius was responsible for the development from the 1870s of mathematical statistics, a quantum leap from descriptive statistics to sophisticated analytical techniques including correlation and regression. Under the influence of Darwinism, Galton studied variation in nature and society and emphasized the inherited differences between individuals and social groups. He led statistics away from its liberal lineage and towards the discipline of eugenics, the study of heritable qualities and conditions, and the promotion of racial ‘improvement’ by different forms of demographic control. Galton’s work and ideology are examined through three case-studies. The first compares Galton’s classification of the population by inherited intelligence to Charles Booth’s social and environmental classification of the classes in London. In the second, Galton’s assault in the late 1870s on the amateurism of statistical work in Section F of the British Association demonstrates his frustration with the old-style social statistics. In the third, his long correspondence in 1890–91 with Florence Nightingale over the establishment of a professorship of statistics in the University of Oxford, a project Galton deterred, is used to mark the end of the Statistical Movement and its supersession by mathematical statistics. Galton’s lack of judgement, his moral failings, and those of the eugenics movement more generally, are emphasized. However, despite interest in eugenics among the late-Victorian and Edwardian intellectual elites, the eugenics movement made little headway against the prevailing environmentalism among policy-makers. Galton revolutionized statistics but did not change the outlook of most statisticians.