Andrew Gelman (whose appreciation of comics is well-known, at least in my circles!) and Susan Kruglinski, doctoral student at The University of Texas at Austin, wrote a fantastic piece on the parallels between statistical graphics and cartoons and comic strips, which recently got published in a magazine, the appropriately named Nightingale, published by the Data Visualization Society. In particular, they manage to associate most convincingly iconic statistical graphics, like the one above produced by Galton to illustrate his novel concept of correlation, with visually close caricatures and cartoons, like this depiction of Napoléon as a spider at the centre of a web, with flies caught there, representing puppet states or about to fall under French influence, with the exception of the British fly…
Archive for Francis Galton
parallels of statistical graphics and comics
Posted in Books, pictures, Statistics, University life with tags Andrew Gelman, BD, comics, correlation, Data Visualization Society, Florence Nightingale, France, Francis Galton, history of statistics, magazine, Napoléon Bonaparte, Nightingale, statistical graphics, Thomas Rowlandson on August 18, 2025 by xi'anearly peer review
Posted in Books, Statistics, University life with tags Alan Turing, Bayesians, Charles Darwin, eulogy, Francis Galton, geophysics, Harold Jeffreys, history of statistics, John Burdon Sanderson Haldane, Nature, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, population genetics, refereeing, Royal Society on December 15, 2024 by xi'an
“For a 1950 paper that discussed ‘anisotropic elastic continuum’ by mathematician James Oldroyd, geophysicist Harold Jeffreys wrote: `Knowing the author, I have confidence that the analysis is correct.’”
(albeit identified as a geophysicist) and Haldane
“A negative review [of Alan Turing’s 1951 paper] by scientist J.B.S. Haldane states: `I consider that the whole non-mathematical part should be re-written.’ A more positive opinion came from physicist Charles Galton Darwin, who said: `This paper is well worth printing, because it will convey to the biologist the possibilities of mathematical morphology.’ Still, Darwin criticized the proposed use of a “digital computer” to simulate wave theory. “The machinery is far too heavy for such a simple purpose,” Darwin argued.”
and Haldane again
“In a 1943 review by Haldane of a paper on the fecundity of Drosophila flies, the reviewer suggested cutting figures and tables, some of the discussion and, bizarrely, a short eulogy of a fly biologist.”
Galton and Watson voluntarily skipping some generations
Posted in Books, Kids, R with tags dynamic programming, Francis Galton, Galton-Watson process, optimisation, R, The Riddler on June 2, 2023 by xi'an
A riddle on a form of a Galton-Watson process, starting from a single unit, where no one dies but rather, at each of 100 generations, Dog either opts for a Uniform number υ of additional units or increments a counter γ by this number υ, its goal being to optimise γ. The solution proposed by the Riddler does not establish his solution’s is the optimal strategy and considers anyway average gains. Solution that consists in always producing more units until the antepenultimate hour (ie incrementing only at the 99th and 100th generations), I tried instead various logical (?) rules and compared outputs by bRute foRce, resulting in higher maxima (over numerous repeated calls) for the alternative principle
s<-function(p=.66){
G=0;K=1 for(t in 1:9){
i=sample(1:K,1)
K=K+i*(i>=K*p)
G=G+i*(i<K*p)}
return(c(G+sample(1:K,1),K))}
Galton’s 1904 paper in Nature
Posted in Books, Statistics, University life with tags American Journal of Sociology, eugenics, Francis Galton, Isaac Newton, Karl Pearson, Nature, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Proceedings of the Royal Society, racism, Sociological Society on October 11, 2022 by xi'an
Nature [28 September] posted an editorial apologizing for publishing Galton’s 1904 speech on Eugenics as part of “material that contributed to bias, exclusion and discrimination in research and society”. Apology that I do not find particularly pertinent from an historical viewpoint, given the massive time, academic, and societal distances we stand from this “paper”, which sounds more than a pamphlet than a scientific paper, by current standards. Reading these 1904 Nature articles show no more connection with a modern scientific journal than considering Isaac Newton’s alchemy notes in the early proceedings of the Royal Society.
“The aim of eugenics is to represent each class or sect by its best specimens; that done, to leave them to work out their common civilization in their own way.” F. Galton
Galton’s speech was published in extenso by the American Journal of Sociology, along with discussions from participants of the Sociological Society meeting. This set of discussions is rather illuminating as the views of the 1904 audience are quite heterogeneous, from complete adherence to a eugenic “golden’ future (see the zealous interventions of K. Pearson or B. Shaw] to misgivings about the ability to define the supposed ranking of members of society by worth or intelligence (H.G. Wells), to rejection that moral traits are genetically inherited (Mercier), to protests against the negation of individual freedom induced by a eugenic state (B. Kidd) and to common sense remarks that improvements in living conditions of the working classes were the key factor in improving society. But, overall, there was no disagreement therein on the very notion of races and on the supposed superiority of the Victorian civilization (with an almost complete exclusion of women from the picture), reflecting on the prejudices of the era and it is quite unlikely that this 1904 paper of Galton had any impact on these prejudices.
What are the chances of that?
Posted in Books, pictures, Statistics, University life with tags axioms of probability, basic probability, book review, CHANCE, Chernobyl, combinatorics, ERNIE, Francis Galton, Krzysztof Burdzy, ludic fallacy, micromort, Nassim Taleb, Philip K. DIck, pseudo-random generator, psychology, quincunx, TV drama on May 13, 2022 by xi'anWhat are the chances that I review a book with this title, a few months after reviewing a book called What is luck?! This one is written by Andrew Elliott, whose Is that a big number? I reviewed a wee bit earlier… And that the cover of this book involves a particularly unlucky sequence of die as in my much earlier review of Krysz Burdzy’s book? (About 10⁻⁶ less likely than the likeliest draw!)
The (relative) specificity of this book is to try to convey the notions of chance and uncertainty to the general public, more in demonstrating that our intuition is most often wrong by examples and simulations, than in delving into psychological reasons as in Barbara Blatchley’s book. The author advances five dualities that underly our (dysfunctional) relation to chance: individual vs. collective, randomness vs. meaning, foresight vs. insight, uniformity vs. variability, and disruption vs. opportunity.
“News programmes clearly understand that the testimonies of individuals draw better audiences than the summaries of statisticians.” (p. xvii)
Some of the nice features of the book are (a) the description of a probabilistic problem at the beginning of each chapter, to be solved at the end, (b) the use of simulation experiments, represented by coloured pixels over a grey band crossing the page, including a section on pseudorandom generators [which is less confusing that the quote below may indicate!], (c) taking full advantage of the quincunx apparatus, and (d) very few apologies for getting into formulas. And even a relevant quote of Taleb’s Black Swan about the ludic fallacy. On the other hand, the author spends quite a large component of the book on chance games, exhibiting a ludic tendency! And contemplates biased coins, while he should know better! The historical sections may prove too much for both informed and uninformed readers. (However, I learned that the UK Government had used a form of lottery to pay interests on premium bonds.) And the later parts are less numerical and quantified, even though the author brings in the micromort measurement [invented by Ronald Howard and] favoured by David Spiegelhalter. Who actually appears to have inspired several other sections, like the one on coincidences (which remains quite light in its investigation!). I finished the book rather quickly by browsing though mostly anecdotes and a lesser feel of a unified discourse. I did not find the attempt to link with the COVID pandemic, which definitely resets our clocks on risk, particularly alluring…
“People go to a lot of trouble to generate truly random numbers—sequences that are impossible to predict.” (p.66)
The apparition of the Normal distribution is somewhat overdone and almost mystical, if the tone gets more reasonable by the end of the corresponding chapter.
“…combining random numbers from distributions that really have no business being added together (…) ends up with a statistic that actually fits the normal distribution quite well.” (p.83)
The part about Bayes and Bayesian reasoning does not include any inference, with a rather duh! criticism of prior modelling.
“If you are tempted to apply a group statistic derived from a broad analysis to a more narrow purpose, you run the risk of making an unfair judgement.” (p.263)
The section about Xenakis’ musical creations as a Markov process was most interesting (and novel to me). I also enjoyed the shared cultural entries, esp. literary ones. Like citing the recent Chernobyl TV drama. Or Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Or yet Monty Python’s Life of Brian. Overall, there is enough trivia and engagement to keep reading the book till its end!
