results, not the precise way in which they are worked out, because an
account of the method employed in similar cases will be found in _Natural
Inheritance_, and again in the Memoir on Finger Prints in the _Phil.
Trans._; it is too technical to be appropriate here, and would occupy too
much space. The only point which need be briefly explained and of which
non-mathematical readers might be ignorant, is how a single numerical
table derived from abstract calculations can be made to apply to such
minute objects as finger prints, as well as to the shot marks on a huge
target; what is the common unit by which departures on such different
scales are measured? The answer is that it is a self-contained unit
appropriate to _each series severally_, and technically called the
Probable Error, or more briefly, P.E., in the headings to the following
tables. In order to determine it, the range of the central half of the
series has to be measured, namely, of that part of the series which
remains after its two extreme quarters have been cut off and removed. The
series had no limitation before, its two ends tailing away indefinitely
into nothingness, but, by the artifice of lopping off a definite fraction
of the whole series from both ends of it, a sharply-defined length, call
it PQ, is obtained. Such series as have usually to be dealt with are
fairly symmetrical, so the position of the half-way point M, between P and
Q, corresponds with rough accuracy to the average of the positions of all
the members of the series, that is to the point whence departures have to
be measured. MP, or MQ,--or still better, 1/2(MP + MQ) is the
above-mentioned Probable Error. It is so called because the amount of
Error, or Departure from M of any one observation, falls just as often
within the distance PE as it falls without it. In the calculated tables of
the Law of Frequency, PE (or a multiple of it) is taken as unity. In each
observed series, the actual measures have to be converted into another
scale, in which the PE of that series is taken as unity. Then observation
and calculation may be compared on equal terms.
[Illustration]
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