Abstract
During the period from about 1830 to 1900 statistical methods gradually came to be used in fields other than the natural sciences. Three pioneers were Quetelet (anthropometry, social sciences), Fechner (psychophysics, factorial experiments), and Galton (genetics, biology, regression, correlation). Applications also occurred in demography, insurance, economics, and medicine. The normal distribution, originally introduced for describing the variation of errors of measurement, was used by Quetelet and Galton to describe the variation of characteristics of individuals. However, in many of the new applications skew distributions were encountered that led to the invention of systems of nonnormal distributions.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2007 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
(2007). Skew Distributions and the Method of Moments. In: A History of Parametric Statistical Inference from Bernoulli to Fisher, 1713–1935. Sources and Studies in the History of Mathematics and Physical Sciences. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-46409-1_15
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-46409-1_15
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-0-387-46408-4
Online ISBN: 978-0-387-46409-1
eBook Packages: Mathematics and StatisticsMathematics and Statistics (R0)