Francis Galton

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Francis Galton

• Why its called regression.

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Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911)

• IQ testers in the early 20th century argued over
  whether Galton was
• the smartest person of his day or
• the smartest person who ever lived.

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Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911)

• Loved to count things.
• Developed the first classification system for
  fingerprints
• For identifying people.
• Pioneer of statistics
• Invented standard deviation

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First use of regression

• Francis Galton (1886). "Regression Towards
  Mediocrity in Hereditary Stature". Journal of the
  Anthropological Institute 15 246263.

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• Galton wrote Hereditary Genius (1869)
• Darwin (after reading Galton) I have always
  maintained that, excepting fools, men did not
  differ much in intellect, only in zeal and hard
  work.
• Galton The rejoinder that might be made to his
  remark about hard work, is that character,
  including the aptitude for work, is heritable
  like every other faculty.

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At the time he published the regression article

• 1884-1890 Galton ran laboratory for measuring
  heads
• Craniometry

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Differences among races echoing differences among
primates?
This diagram from Samuel George Morton, 1839
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Scientific Racism

• Explanation for mens dominance over women, white
  mens dominance over men of color around the
  world in terms of individuals unchangeable
  characteristics
• Rather than social construct
• Social science is science, too

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1899, The Races of Europe.
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• Craniometry reality check
• Men bigger heads than women smarter?
• Stephen J. Gould re-examined Mortons skulls
• Ever changing methods for measuring skulls to get
  the results assumed to be true
• Neoteny

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Statistical concepts developed as part of effort
to make sexism and racism

• Standard deviation
• Regression
• Correlation coefficient (r and R2)
• Factor analysis

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Eugenics

• Galton invented the term in 1883
• Eu genics inheriting good things
• Galton advocated that families should be
  evaluated given marks -- for fitness
• Money incentive for families with high marks to
  have more children
• Horrors of World War II made eugenics
  unfashionable
• Sterilization of defectives in the U.S.

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Galton and scientific racism revived?

• The Bell Curve 1994
• Race and IQ

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