André-Michel Guerry'sOrdonnateur Statistique: The First Statistical Calculator?

Abstract

A document retrieved from the archives of the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers (CNAM) in Paris sheds new light on the invention by André-Michel Guerry of a mechanical device for obtaining statistical summaries and for examining the relationship between different variables, well before general purpose statistical calculators and the idea of correlation had even been conceived. Guerry's ordonnateur statistique may arguably be considered as the first example of a mechanical device devoted to statistical calculations. This article describes what is now known about this machine and illustrates how Guerry probably used it in his program of statistique analytique to reason about the relationship of types of crimes to various potential causes or associations. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.

A conjectural and partial understanding of statistical libration indices in André-Michel Guerry’s 1864 Atlas

“…The ordonnateur is presumably a rudimentary device which helped to compute by hand 10 the cumulative sum of an ordered series sorted according to the ordering series (see (Friendly and de Saint Agathe 2012) and (Friendly 2022)). By joining the term analytique to the word ordonnateur Guerry makes an implicit reference to Babbage's Analytical Engine which he knew.…”

Explicando la delincuencia en Barcelona: ¿Desorganización social u oportunidades del turismo?

“…Marco teóricoLa Criminología Espacial surge en la Escuela criminológica belga-francesa del siglo XIX. En 1829, Adriano Balbi y Andre-Michel Guerry crearon los primeros mapas de delitos, combinando los conocimientos cartográficos de Balbi con la comprensión del fenómeno delictivo de Guerry(Friendly, 2007;Friendly & Sainte Agathe, 2012). Adolphe Quételet, en 1836, también reveló patrones delictivos en relación con factores demográficos y geográficos en su obra "Sur l'homme et le développement de ses facultés" (Quételet, 1836).…”