What’s missing here is that Darwin’s description and the advent of inferential statistics are both born from trying to solve the same problem: How to identify something like “truth” in a complex, largely uncontrolable physical system (i.e. the natural world of life forms). Both of these stem from Darwin’s elder and lesser-known cousin— Francis Galton. Galton took a trip similar to Darwin’s before the Beagle and studied the variety of humans (not birds or iguanas). After returning, he and his students (Fisher, Pearson, and Spearman) invented inferential statistics. Galton is often mentioned for his observation of “mental adaptive capacity” (aka intelligence) and (far more sinister) eugenics.
What’s missing here is that Darwin’s description and the advent of inferential statistics are both born from trying to solve the same problem: How to identify something like “truth” in a complex, largely uncontrolable physical system (i.e. the natural world of life forms). Both of these stem from Darwin’s elder and lesser-known cousin— Francis Galton. Galton took a trip similar to Darwin’s before the Beagle and studied the variety of humans (not birds or iguanas). After returning, he and his students (Fisher, Pearson, and Spearman) invented inferential statistics. Galton is often mentioned for his observation of “mental adaptive capacity” (aka intelligence) and (far more sinister) eugenics.
Now that (Galton) is interesting, my friend.