Adolphe Quetelet Research Articles

Weight/height2: Mathematical overview of the world's most widely used adiposity index.

A footnote in Adolphe Quetelet's classic 1835 Treatise on Man described his algebraic analysis of how body weight ( ) varies with height ( ) in adult males and females. Using data on 12 short and 12 tall subjects of each sex, Quetelet established the rule that is approximately proportional ( ) to H2 in adults; that is, when for some constant . Quetelet's Rule ( ), transformed and renamed in the twentieth century to body mass index ( ), is now a globally applied phenotypic descriptor of adiposity at the individual and population level. The journey from footnote to ubiquitous adiposity measure traveled through hundreds of scientific reports and many more lay publications. The recent introduction of highly effective pharmacologic weight loss treatments has heightened scrutiny of BMI's origins and appropriateness as a gateway marker for diagnosing and monitoring people with obesity. This contemporary context prompted the current report that delves into the biological and mathematical paradigms that underlie the simple index . Students and practitioners can improve or gain new insights into their understanding of BMI's historical origins and quantitative underpinning from the provided overview, facilitating informed use of BMI and related indices in research and clinical settings.

Estimated-Adult BMI Versus BMI for Monitoring Childhood Obesity

A child or an adult is considered obese (wasted), when the incumbent has excess (lesser) mass-for-height. BMI (body-mass index) is, universally, employed to estimate status of obesity (wasting). The name was given by Ancel Keys (1904-2004) and co-workers, replacing the earlier name ‘Quetelet index’ (1832) after the Belgian astronomer, mathematician and statistician, Adolphe Quetelet (1796-1874). To compute BMI of an individual, one should divide the incumbent’s mass (in kg — kilograms) by square of height (in m — meters). This index has its weak as well as its strong points. It is not able to account for factors like size of body frame as well as muscularity. Further, it is based on incorrect assumptions about body fat and lean mass distribution. As the person attains mature age, a decrease in height occurs, which results in BMI reduction, although the mass is not altered. Further, BMI is not able to establish a universal threshold for conditions of overweight and underweight as well as inter- and intra-region variations in body compositions of different communities, the later one appears by the presence of different ethnic groups within the same region. For children, the BMI range, which is routinely employed for estimating statuses for adults, is not applicable. BMI tables are needed to interpret childhood obesity-and-malnutrition.

Editorial

Editorial

QUETELET, THE FATHER OF STATISTICS

By the 17th and 18th centuries, two trends in statistics had developed: descriptive statistics and political arithmetic. The main representatives of descriptive statistics were the newly established statistical offices or organisations in the countries. The main task of this movement was to describe the status of the state. Political arithmetic concentrated on the observation of socio-economic phenomena that could be quantified and on the relationships between social phenomena. Adolphe Quetelet, who played a major role in many disciplines, was most active in the field of statistics. He was the man who united the two branches of statistics and one of the people who made statistics a science. He is associated with the founding of many statistical journals and societies, and worked tirelessly to establish international cooperation between statisticians, resulting in the regular International Statistical Congresses. The aim of this article is to summarise Quetelet’s work and the history of the International Statistical Congresses, which contributed to the harmonisation of national statistics. Finally, we have examined Quetelet’s work in the field of crime statistics because Quetelet focused his attention not only on crime, but also on all the phenomena he believed determined the moral face of society. He also studied the evolution of suicide, divorce, out-of-wedlock births and prostitution. Quetelet recognised that it was possible to improve the state of human societies through appropriate state intervention, but that this required an understanding of the interplay of social processes. It can therefore be said that Quetelet made an outstanding contribution to many important areas of statistics and can rightly be called the father of statistics.

Victorians and Numbers: Statistics and Society in Nineteenth Century Britain by Lawrence Goldman

<i>Victorians and Numbers: Statistics and Society in Nineteenth Century Britain</i> by Lawrence Goldman

Victorians and Numbers: Statistics and Society in Nineteenth-Century Britain, by Lawrence Goldman

This is a commanding book. Having maintained an interest in Victorian statistical thought for nearly forty years, Lawrence Goldman must have been tempted to produce an encyclopaedia. Instead, he has delivered a (relatively) compact, closely argued monograph. Specialist historians of statistics and social science will have plenty to say about it, but they are only a subset of the book’s intended audience. The arguments made by Goldman about the rise and fall of statistical modes of thinking hold general significance for our understanding of the Victorian mind, and the character of nineteenth-century liberalism. There is a vast existing scholarship on matters statistical in nineteenth-century Britain and Europe, as Goldman’s full-to-bursting footnotes underline. His book challenges it in several ways. Goldman’s methodology, in the first place, is ‘largely sociological and contextual rather than discursive’ (p. xxxv). He asks how and why specific individuals and groups sought to develop and deploy statistical modes of reasoning. The protagonists include Charles Babbage, William Farr, Ada Lovelace and—as part of a significant international cohort—the Belgian Adolphe Quetelet and the German Alexander von Humboldt. Beyond these headline names, and other figures of middle rank, Goldman also draws deeply on the well of scholarship on lesser-known statistically minded Victorians that he helped to dig as editor of the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. The point of adopting this approach is to reconnect internal developments in statistics with their wider environments. The result is a fresh, newly tangible picture of the social networks within which statistics came to appear the discipline of the future.

РЕЗУЛЬТАТЫ ПЕРВОГО ОПЫТА БИОИМПЕДАНСНОГО АНАЛИЗА СОСТАВА ТЕЛА НАСЕЛЕНИЯ РЕСПУБЛИКИ ТАДЖИКИСТАН

Objective: Evaluation of a pilot study results examining bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) of body composition of the population of the Republic of Tajikistan. Methods: The body composition of 1304 individuals was studied using bioimpedance measurements. The study included 718 women (55.1%) and 586 men (44.9%) with an average age of 41.1±13.6 years. The following variables were measured: fat mass (FM, kg), percent body fat (PBF, %), fat-free mass (FFM, kg), body cell mass (BCM, %), percent body cell mass (PBCM, %), skeletal muscle mass (SMM, kg), percentage of SMM (PSMM, %), total body water (TBW, kg), extracellular fluid (ECF, kg), bone mineral content (BMC, kg), basal metabolic rate (BMR, kcal/day) and mass-specific metabolic rate (msBMR, kcal/m2 /day). In addition to examining patients, we determined their body mass index (BMI) and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) using the Adolphe Quetelet formula. Results: The average FM for all study subjects was 22.5±12.04 kg. Women displayed 24.2% more FM than men – 24.6±12.0 kg and 19.8±11.6 kg, respectively (p 0.001). LM in all subjects averaged 44.9±4.7 kg, in men and women – 46.3±3.6 kg and 44.0±4.3 kg, respectively (p 0.05). As a result, men had a higher BMR than women – 1735.5±102.1 kcal/day and 918.9±57.2 kcal/day, respectively (p 0.001). There were no significant gender differences in msBMR: for men and women, the average was 853.7±30.8 and 846.4±33.3 kcal/m2/day, respectively (p 0.05). There were also no gender differences in BMC for men and women: the average was 2.1±0.2 and 2.1±0.2 kg, respectively (p 0.05). The results showed positive significant (p 0.05) linear relationships between BMI categories and WHR (r=0.182), FM (r=0.933), PBF (r=0.855), FFM (r=0.262), BCM (r=0.159), TBW (r=0.259), ECF (r=0.440), BMC (r=0.522), BMR (r=0.161), and negative linear relationship – with PBCM (r= -0.042), SMM (r= -0.121), PSMM (r= -0.605) and msBMR (r=-0.521).Conclusion: BIA is a highly effective method for assessing body composition, allowing for accurate determination of fat and lean mass, total body fluid, and basal metabolic rates. The differences in the above indicators varied based on gender, age, and body weight of the examined cohort. Using bioimpedance instead of anthropometry provides a more accurate assessment of obesity. Keywords: Electrical impedance measurement, bioimpedance analysis, overweight, obesity, fat mass

Neck circumference is as good an indicator of obesity as waist hip ratio

Introduction: BMI (Body mass index), Waist Hip ratio (WHR) and even body fat percentage (BF %) or fat mass are indicators that are commonly used for assessment and grading of obesity. Of late researchers are exploring the possibility of using neck circumference as another indicator of obesity. Neck circumference (NC) is found in many studies to reflect central obesity. Our study however aims at comparing the correlation between Neck circumference, BMI and body fat percentage with the correlation between Waist Hip Ratio, BMI and body fat percentage in both lean and obese adults, to find out whether Neck circumference or waist hip ratio is a better indicator of obesity. Materials and Methods: This is an analytical observational preliminary study which is a part of a larger study. Sample study consists of 36 participants who are adults in the range of 18 to 60 years old of both genders, which comprises of 19 lean and 17 obese research participants. Anthropometric data of the research participants such as age, sex, weight, height, waist circumference, and hip circumference were measured. BMI was calculated using Adolphe Quetelet metric BMI formula. Body fat percentage was measured using DEXA (Dual X-ray Absorbtiometry) scan. Results: The overall group, NC showed strong positive correlation with BMI whereas WHR showed moderate correlation with BMI. There is also a moderate correlation between NC, WHR and BF%. In lean adults it is observed that the moderate correlation between neck circumference (NC) and BMI is similar to the correlation between WHR and BMI. Again in lean adults, the correlation between NC and BF% is a weak positive and the correlation between WHR and BF% is towards a strong positive side. It is observed that in obese adults the NC, WHR demonstrate moderate correlation with BMI, while a negative correlation exists between NC, WHR and BF%. Conclusion: According to the results of our study, it is obvious that neck circumference like WHR do correlate with BMI in all the three groups that is, in the overall, lean and obese research participants. And that neck circumference is as good an indicator as WHR in identifying adults with obesity.

The discipline that came in from the cold: American human geography becomes a Cold War social science

The high–Cold War period – from the Truman doctrine to the Cuban missile crisis – brought not only profound changes in geography but also profound changes to Geography. The discipline moved from a museum-like, fusty subject to aspiring to be a Cold War, cutting-edge hybrid social science (or behavioural science) ‘cross-bred’ with physical and applied sciences. The vehicle was social physics. Its origins were in the 17th century, but the actual name was not coined until 1835 and then in French, ‘Physique Sociale’, by the Belgian astronomer, statistician and social tabulator, Adolphe Quetelet (1796–1874). As a project, social physics rested on the belief of monism in which the same formal explanatory scientific principles held in both natural and social worlds. In the particular case of Cold War geography, monism meant asserting that specifically Newtonian equations describing the movements of celestial bodies in the heavens could explain equally as well movements of human bodies down on earth. In American human geography, social physics was pioneered from the early 1950s by William Warntz, who collaborated early on with the Princeton astrophysicist, John Stewart, who, in turn, had previously worked with the Harvard linguist, George Zipf. Together Warntz and Stewart using home-made early computing devices and drawing on Newtonian formulations of potential cast geography as social physics, extolling its virtues as ‘macrogeography’ and on par with other disciplines that already had entered the Pantheon of Cold War social science.

“Harvard Scientist Seeks Typical Irishman”

Abstract In 1870, the Belgian Adolphe Quetelet wrote in his seminal scientific work Anthropometrié that “the average man characterises the nation to which he belongs.” An obsession with the “national” characterized the field of anthropometry, which scientists such as Quetelet pioneered in the Francophone world; their techniques were quickly adopted and adapted elsewhere—by Francis Galton in London and by Aleš Hrdlička, Earnest Hooton, and Franz Boas in the United States. Ireland played a surprisingly central role in this burgeoning new field of international scientific enquiry, which quickly became focused on connecting racial and criminal “degeneracy” under the guise of a scientific search for the “normal,” “average,” or “typical” example of any given ethnic or social group. This article connects two major Irish research projects, the Dublin Anthropometric Lab at Trinity College Dublin (1888–99) and the physical anthropology strand of the Harvard Irish Study (1934–36), to show that Ireland was an important node in the network of scientists and researchers who constructed the discourses of global racial science.

Adolphe Quetelet and the legacy of the "average man" in psychology.

Adolphe Quetelet was a Belgian polymath who aimed to advance aggregate-level statistical tools as a unifying framework for all scientific disciplines. In doing so, Quetelet adopted the astronomer's Law of Error (i.e., the normal distribution curve) and applied it to the study of moral and social phenomena in developing his notion of physique sociale (social physics). Quetelet further focused his attention on l'homme moyen (the average man) and, as such, argued that the average value of a distribution should be of primary concern in the study of human attributes. In the present article, I examine the influences that these ideas had on the methodological practices of late 19th- and early 20th- century psychologists. I illustrate how the dominant methodological approach implemented by psychologists in the early 20th century was deeply rooted in the demography of Quetelet's social statistics. In particular, I argue that psychologists' adoption of the Neo-Galtonian model of research was successful because it embraced Quetelet's determinism, emphasis on average values, and grouping of distributions based on type. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

On Educational Assessment Theory: A High-Level Discussion of Adolphe Quetelet, Platonism, and Ergodicity

Educational assessments, specifically standardized and normalized exams, owe most of their foundations to psychological test theory in psychometrics. While the theoretical assumptions of these practices are widespread and relatively uncontroversial in the testing community, there are at least two that are philosophically and mathematically suspect and have troubling implications in education. Assumption 1 is that repeated assessment measures that are calculated into an arithmetic mean are thought to represent some real stable, quantitative psychological trait or ability plus some error. Assumption 2 is that aggregated, group-level educational data collected from assessments can then be interpreted to make inferences about a given individual person over time without explicit justification. It is argued that the former assumption cannot be taken for granted; it is also argued that, while it is typically attributed to 20th century thought, the assumption in a rigorous form can be traced back at least to the 1830s via an unattractive Platonistic statistical thesis offered by one of the founders of the social sciences—Belgian mathematician Adolphe Quetelet (1796–1874). While contemporary research has moved away from using his work directly, it is demonstrated that cognitive psychology is still facing the preservation of assumption 1, which is becoming increasingly challenged by current paradigms that pitch human cognition as a dynamical, complex system. However, how to deal with assumption 1 and whether it is broadly justified is left as an open question. It is then argued that assumption 2 is only justified by assessments having ergodic properties, which is a criterion rarely met in education; specifically, some forms of normalized standardized exams are intrinsically non-ergodic and should be thought of as invalid assessments for saying much about individual students and their capability. The article closes with a call for the introduction of dynamical mathematics into educational assessment at a conceptual level (e.g., through Bayesian networks), the critical analysis of several key psychological testing assumptions, and the introduction of dynamical language into philosophical discourse. Each of these prima facie distinct areas ought to inform each other more closely in educational studies.

Congress Mania in Brussels, 1846–1856

In 1853, the director of the Belgium Royal Observatory, Adolphe Quetelet, welcomed delegates from several countries to two consecutive meetings that have acquired considerable reputation as the first international congresses of, respectively, meteorology and statistics. This paper examines the local context where several similar international congresses (on free trade, universal peace, prison reform, public hygiene, etc.) were organized in the same decade. It argues that the new Belgian state developed this new form of international conference in order to bolster its soft power in the Concert of Nations. It also discusses tensions between national interests and global beliefs in the efficiency of science, which arose from these congresses. This essay is part of a special issue entitled Science Diplomacy, edited by Giulia Rispoli and Simone Turchetti.

The Scope of Body Mass Index (BMI) and other body component measurements

This paper presents and compare the scopes of the body component measurement methods and techniques currently in use. Next to the best known and widespread Adolphe Quetelet's Body Mass Index, ‘New Body Mass Index’ created by Prof. Trfethen. Moreover, it presents and compares the bioelectrical impedance analysis and the Electrical Impedance Myographs methods, too. This article aims to go through one by one the body component measurement methods, and to compare the most important feature of them, for a better understanding of their usability.

Adolphe Quetelet’s Premonition Two Centuries after: Besides Its Implications in Physiology (Obesity, Type 2 Diabetes), Its Paramount Importance in Human Pregnancy

Adolphe Quételet (1796-1874) proposed in 1835 the “Quételet index”, which was re-discovered in 1972 by Keys et al. under the acronym “Body Mass index”, BMI. The author makes an historical overview of the evolution of this BMI and its interest in medical science and anthropometry. Nowadays this BMI appears to be involved in a mathematical linear law concerning the gestational weight gain in human pregnancies. Getting rid of the current fuzzy recommendations concerning the optimal weight gain for each woman in pregnancy, this may have paramount consequences for the future. When confirmed, Quételet’s proposal will appear as a further Copernician revolution in human anthropometry.

The Physics of Possibility: Victorian Fiction, Science, and Gender

The Physics of Possibility: Victorian Fiction, Science, and Gender

Sociology in Great Little Belgium

The rise of nation-states created new spaces for scholarship. The development of sociology has been shaped, both institutionally and intellectually, by different national contexts. This paper looks at the development of the social sciences, and sociology in particular, in little Belgium. We first discuss the work and the international ambitions of the social physicist and homo statisticus Adolphe Quetelet. Next we look at the ideological rivalry between the emerging sociological centers in and around the universities of Brussels and Louvain in the decades around 1900. Afterwards we discuss the growing divergence between the French- and Dutch-speaking scientific communities and the development of different sociologies within Belgium in more recent decades. We conclude with a discussion of the internationalization imperatives currently imposed by Belgian universities and funding agencies.

At the borders of the average man: Adolphe Quêtelet on mental, moral, and criminal monstrosities

This study examines Adolphe Quêtelet's conception of deviance. It investigates how he identified social marginalities and what actions he recommended governments to undertake. To get a close understanding of his views, this paper examines three cases of "monstrosities," namely mental alienation, drunkenness, and criminality. My main thesis is that Quêtelet provided scientific authority to a conception of deviance as sickness, immorality, and cost thus encouraging legislators to use statistics for containing social marginalities. The case of alienation shows that Quêtelet viewed insanity as a pathology of civilization to be understood through phrenology. The case of drunkenness demonstrates how Quêtelet conflated the notion of statistical mean with moral decency. The case of criminality illustrates Quêtelet's major concern with the cost of criminals for the state. While advocating for the perfectibility of mankind, Quêtelet urged governments to take actions against what he considered the monstrosities of society.

Population, Territory, and State-istics: “Habitual Residence” in the Belgian Census, 1846–1947

Abstract In the eighteenth century, statistics was designed and understood as state-istics, as a scientific representation of the state, its territory, and its population. Statistics helped modern nation-states to “embrace” the social lives of the people contained in them; it served these nation-states to monitor the condition, to promote the welfare, and to protect the rights of their people. The history of statistics can therefore be analyzed to shed light on the politics of membership in modern states. In this article, I present a case study that focuses on the various specifications of the notion of habitual residence in the Belgian population censuses, from the middle of the nineteenth century—the first Belgian censuses organized by the homo statisticus Adolphe Quetelet—up until the middle of the twentieth century, when the welfare state more actively took “responsibility for its population.” My analyses show how the classification schemes of the Belgian population censuses elucidate underlying politics of membership and belonging. The use and development of the notion of habitual residence displays the ways in which the state (re-)articulated its expectations regarding society membership. It is not only indicative of new ways of managing the population but also of the establishment of specific norms and evaluative standards about the individuals who are living within the boundaries of the nation-state.

Debrief: Averagarians and individuals.

Have you ever felt uncomfortable advising patients on the evidence for the best treatment decisions? The evidence is steeped in averages yet we are always sitting with a single person. We have to wrestle with the conflicting pressures of guidelines and the individual. It’s an ever-present paradox, lurking in the shadows of the consultation. Peering at the evidence through the lens of the individual often leaves us with a blurry picture. Much of this is down to the tyranny of the average. That started, according to Todd Rose in his book The End of Average: How We Succeed in a World That Values Sameness , with the studies of Adolphe Quetelet, a Belgian, born in 1796.1 In one of the first examples of open-access …