Karl Pearson (1857–1936)

[摘要] Karl Pearson (1857- 1936) was one of the founding fathers of statistics and played a definitiverole in shaping the then nascent field and getting it recognized as a well-defined scientific pur-suit in its own right. Many commonplace notions and techniques in basic statistics that we nowtake for granted originate with him. These include mode, histogram, correlation coeficient,contingency table, method of moments, chi-square test and principal component analysis, notto mention a family of distributions named after him (see the article by Radhendushka Srivas-tava in this issue). Even the earliest mathematical work on random walk by Lord Raleigh wasin response to a question posed by Pearson.

[学科分类] 社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）