I propose now to speak of those fundamental principles of the laws of
Probability that are chiefly concerned in the newer methods of Biometry,
and consequently of Eugenics. Most persons of ordinary education seem to
know nothing about them, not even understanding their technical terms,
much less appreciating the cogency of their results. This popular
ignorance so obstructs the path of Eugenics that I venture to tax your
attention by proposing a method of partly dispelling it. Let me first
say that no one can be more conscious than myself of the large amount of
study that is required to qualify a man to deal adequately with the
mathematical methods of Biometry, or that any man can hope for much
success in that direction unless he is possessed of appropriate
faculties and a strong brain. On the other hand, I hold an opinion
likely at first sight to scandalize biometricians and which I must
justify, that the fundamental ideas on which abstruse problems of
Probability are based admit of being so presented to any intelligent
person as to be grasped by him, even though he be quite ignorant of
mathematics. The conditions of doing so are that the lessons shall be as
far as possible ‘Object lessons,’ in which real objects shall be handled
as in the Kindergarten system, and simple operations performed and not
only talked about. I am anxious to make myself so far understood, that
some teachers of science may be induced to elaborate the course that I
present now only in outline. It seems to me suitably divisible into a
course of five lessons of one hour each, which would be sufficient to
introduce the learner into a new world of ideas, extraordinarily wide in
their application. A proper notion of what is meant by Correlation
requires some knowledge of the principal features of Variation, and will
be the goal towards which the lessons lead.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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