Karl Pearson's Influence in the United States

Abstract

Karl Pearson, the founder of mathematical statistics, was the leading statistical researcher from the 1890s up to about 1920. His interests were wide-ranging and so his impact on statistics in the United States was also wide-ranging. Many American researchers came to University College London to study with him. Others studied his work from afar. In the United States, Pearsonian statistics first penetrated the academic landscape in biology. This was soon followed by the fields of economics and psychology. It was not until relatively late in Pearson's career that several American mathematicians took up statistics as a serious research topic. Copyright (c) 2009 The Author. Journal compilation (c) 2009 International Statistical Institute.

An Evaluation (and Vindication?) of Lewis Terman: What the Father of Gifted Education Can Teach the 21st Century

“…Other eugenicists included Sigmund Freud (Richardson, 2011), George Bernard Shaw, Margaret Sanger, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., American presidents Theodore Roosevelt and Calvin Coolidge (Leslie, 2000), H. G. Wells, John Maynard Keynes, John D. Rockefeller Jr., George Eastman, Emma Goldman, and many then-prominent individuals whose names are less recognizable today (Kevles, 1995). Scientists who advocated the philosophy included statisticians Karl Pearson (E. S. Pearson, 1936) and Sir Ronald Fisher, many geneticists and biologists (Kevles, 1995), and Terman's colleagues Henry Goddard, Robert Yerkes, Charles Spearman, (Fancher, 1985), Carl Brigham, G. Stanley Hall (Kevles, 1995), and Truman Kelley, who also contributed statistical analyses to the Genetic Studies of Genius (Bellhouse, 2009). These lists are not given to excuse Terman's advocacy of eugenics but rather to help readers understand that Terman was part of a very large, respected international social movement that viewed itself as applying Darwin's ideas to the "betterment" of future generations.…”

“…Scientists who advocated the philosophy included statisticians Karl Pearson (E. S. Pearson, 1936) and Sir Ronald Fisher, many geneticists and biologists (Kevles, 1995), and Terman’s colleagues Henry Goddard, Robert Yerkes, Charles Spearman, (Fancher, 1985), Carl Brigham, G. Stanley Hall (Kevles, 1995), and Truman Kelley, who also contributed statistical analyses to the Genetic Studies of Genius (Bellhouse, 2009). These lists are not given to excuse Terman’s advocacy of eugenics but rather to help readers understand that Terman was part of a very large, respected international social movement that viewed itself as applying Darwin’s ideas to the “betterment” of future generations.…”

Reconciling Contemporary Gifted Education with Its Foundations

“…The correlation coefficient's implications remain widespread because it allowed scientists to investigate the existence of individual differences of all types (Norton, 1978), and its use soon spread to other fields, including psychology (Bellhouse, 2009). For gifted education, one important consequence was the ability to study individual differences in educational performance and aptitude as an exact, quantitative endeavor.…”

“…For example, Kohlman (2013) called the correlation coefficient an example of "eugenic remnants" in the social sciences because Karl Pearson was a eugenicist, and he developed the statistic to further research into theories of inheritance. While it is true that Pearson was a eugenicist (Bellhouse, 2009) and that the correlation coefficient was developed to further his study of heredity (Stigler, 1986), this does not make the correlation coefficient inappropriate for scholarly use. Subscribing to the genetic fallacy in gifted education would make valuable ideas as grade skipping, curriculum enrichment, and longitudinal studies off limits because advocates of these ideas also happened to endorse RECONCILING GIFTED EDUCATION 28 eugenic ideas (Warne, 2019).…”

Karl Pearson in Russian Contexts

“…Chuprov and Slutsky were initially political economists, although Slutsky (1912) was motivated by the biology‐linked work of Leontovich, and thereby reworked much of the biology‐linked work of the English Biometric School. Through, perhaps, Leontovich, he was also aware of the work, such as Davenport (1904), of the American disciples of Pearson's biological direction, for whom see Bellhouse (2009) in this issue of the International Statistical Review .…”