Udny Yule
George Udny Yule | |
---|---|
Awards | Guy Medal (Gold, 1911) |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Statistics, Genetics |
Institutions | University College London, University of Cambridge |
George Udny Yule
Personal life
Yule was born at Beech Hill, a house in
In 1899, Yule married May Winifred Cummings. The marriage was annulled in 1912, producing no children.[4]
Education and teaching
Udny Yule was educated at
In 1902 Yule became Newmarch lecturer in statistics at University College, a position he held together with his post at the City and Guilds Institute. He continued to publish articles and also wrote an influential textbook, Introduction to the Theory of Statistics (1911), based on his lectures.[5]
In 1912 Yule moved to
Scholarship
Yule was a prolific writer, the highlight of his publications being perhaps the
Yule's first paper on statistics appeared in 1895: "On the Correlation of Total Pauperism with Proportion of Out-relief". Yule was interested in applying statistical techniques to social problems and he quickly became a member of the
In the 1920s Yule wrote three influential papers on
Yule distribution
In 1922, J. C. Willis published Age and Area, based on botanical field work in Ceylon, where he studied the distributional patterns of the Ceylonese vascular plants in great detail. He compiled a table of the number of existent species in each genus of flowering plants, and the same for the Rubiaceae, and for the Chrysomelid beetles.
Let be the number of genera with existent species. When is plotted on a log-log plot, each of these follows a straight line. This shows that for some . That is, the distribution has a power-law tail. The figures are found in,[8] or [9] page 241 and 242.
In 1925 Yule published the paper "A Mathematical Theory of Evolution, based on the Conclusions of Dr. J. C. Willis, F.R.S.", where he proposed a stochastic process which reproduces the power-law tail.[2] This was later called the Yule process, but is now better known as preferential attachment.
Assessment
Frank Yates culminated his 1952 obituary of Yule by saying:
“To summarize we may, I think, justly conclude that though Yule did not fully develop any completely new branches of statistical theory, he took the first steps in many directions which were later to prove fruitful lines for further progress… He can indeed rightly claim to be one of the pioneers of modern statistics”.[11]
Yule made important contributions to the theory and practice of
Although Yule taught at Cambridge for twenty years, he had little impact on the development of statistics there. M. S. Bartlett recalled him as a "mentor" but his famous association with Maurice Kendall, who revised the Introduction to the Theory of Statistics, only came about after Kendall had graduated.
Selected works
- Yule, G. U. (1896). "On the Significance of Bravais' Formulae for Regression, &c., in the Case of Skew Correlation". .
- Yule, G. U. (1900). "On the Association of Attributes in Statistics: With Illustrations from the Material of the Childhood Society, &c". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences. 194 (252–261): 257–319. .
- Yule, G. U.; Pearson, K. (1901). "On the Theory of Consistence of Logical Class-Frequencies, and Its Geometrical Representation". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences. 197 (287–299): 91. .
- Yule, G. U. (1902). "Mendel's Laws and their probable relations to inter-racial heredity". New Phytologist. 1 (10): 226–227. .
- Yule, G. U. (1907). "On the Theory of Correlation for any Number of Variables, Treated by a New System of Notation". Proceedings of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences. 79 (529): 182–193. .
- Yule, G. Udny (1911). An Introduction to the Theory of Statistics. London: Charles Griffin. Eighth Edition, 1927
- Yule, G. U. (1927). "On a Method of Investigating Periodicities in Disturbed Series, with Special Reference to Wolfer's Sunspot Numbers". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences. 226 (636–646): 267–298. .
References
- S2CID 178300526.
- ^ S2CID 86079660.
- S2CID 178300526.
- ^ annulment: Yates, 1952
- ^ doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/37086. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ISBN 978-1-932482-44-7.
- ^ "Why Do We Sometimes Get Nonsense Correlations between Time-series?" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 2 June 2016. Retrieved 20 November 2019.
- S2CID 4068702.
- ^ J C Willis (1 January 1922). Age and Area: A Study in Geographical Distribution and Origin of Species. Internet Archive. Cambridge University Press.
- , retrieved 14 July 2023
- ^ pioneer of modern statistics: Yates 1952, p. 320