To most persons Variability implies something indefinite and capricious.
They require to be taught that it, like Proteus in the old fable, can be
seized, securely bound, and utilized; that it can be defined and
measured. It was disregarded by the old methods of statistics, that
concerned themselves solely with Averages. The average amount of various
measurable faculties or events in a multitude of persons was determined
by simple methods, the individual variations being left out of account
as too difficult to deal with. A population was treated by the old
methods as a structureless atom, but the newer methods treat it as a
compound unit. It will be a considerable intellectual gain to an
otherwise educated person, to fully understand the way in which this can
be done, and this and such like matters the proposed course of lessons
is intended to make clear. It cannot be expected that in the few
available minutes more than an outline can be given here of what is
intended to be conveyed in perhaps thirty-fold as much time with the aid
of profuse illustrations by objects and diagrams. At the risk of being
wearisome, it is, however, necessary to offer the following syllabus of
what is proposed, for an outline of what teachers might fill in.
The object of the first lesson would be to explain and illustrate
Variability of Size, Weight, Number, &c., by exhibiting samples of
specimens that have been marshalled at random (Fig. 1), or arrayed in
order of their magnitude (Fig. 2). Thus when variations of length were
considered, objects of suitable size, such as chestnuts, acorns,
hazel-nuts, stones of wall fruit, might be arrayed as beads on a string.
It will be shown that an ‘Array’ of Variates of any kind falls into a
continuous series. That each variate differs little from its neighbours
about the middles of the Arrays, but that such differences increase
rapidly towards their extremities. Abundant illustration would be
required, and much handling of specimens.
Arrays of Variates of the same class strung together, differing
considerably in the number of the objects they each contain, would be
laid side by side and their middlemost variates or ‘Medians’ (Fig. 3)
would be compared. It would be shown that as a rule the Medians become
very similar to one another when the numbers in the Arrays are large. It
must then be dogmatically explained that double accuracy usually
accompanies a four-fold number, treble accuracy a nine-fold number, and
so on.
(This concludes the first lesson, during which the words and
significations of Variability, Variate, Array, and Median will have been
learnt.)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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