INTRODUCTION, 
the exposition of the characteristics of a State by numerical 
methods. It is difficult to say at what epoch the word came 
definitely to bear this quantitative meaning, but the transition 
appears to have been only half accomplished even after the founda- 
tion of the Royal Statistical Society in 1834. The articles in the 
first volume of the Journal, issued in 1838-9, are for the most 
part of a numerical character, but the official definition has no 
reference to method. ¢ Statistics,” we read, “may be said, in the 
words of the prospectus of this Society, to be the ascertain- 
ing and bringing together of those facts which are calculated to 
illustrate the condition and prospects of society.” It is, however, 
admitted that “the statist commonly prefers to employ figures 
and tabular exhibitions.” 
5. Once, however, the first change of meaning was accomplished, 
further changes followed. From the name of a science or art of 
state-description by numerical methods, the word was transferred to 
those series of figures with which it operated, as we speak of vital 
statistics, poor-law statistics, and so forth. But similar data 
occur in many connections ; in meteorology, for instance, in anthro- 
pology, ete. Such collections of numerical data were also termed 
“statistics,” and consequently, at the present day, the word is 
held to cover a collection of numerical data, analogous to those 
which were originally formed for the study of the state, on almost 
any subject whatever. We not only read of rainfall “statistics,” 
but of “statistics” showing the growth of an organisation for 
recording rainfall? We find a chapter headed ‘Statistics ” in a 
book on psychology,® and the author, writing of ‘statistics con- 
cerning the mental characteristics of man,” “statistics of children, 
under the headings bright—average—dull.”* We are informed 
that, in a book on Latin verse, the characteristics of the Virgilian 
hexameter “are examined carefully with statistics.” 
6. The development in meaning of the adjective * statistical” 
was naturally similar. The methods applied to the study of 
numerical data concerning the state were still termed statistical 
methods,” even when appiied to data from other sources. Thus 
we read of the inheritance of genius being treated ‘in a statistical 
manner,”® and we have now ‘a journal for the statistical 
study of biological problems.”” Such phrases as “the statistical 
Jour. Stat. Soc., vol. i. p. 1. 
? Symons’ British Rainfall for 1899, p. 15. 
* E. W. Scripture, The New Psychology, 1897, chap. ii. 
4 Op. cit. p. 18. 
5 Atheneum, Oct. 3, 1903. 
* Francis Galton, Hereditary Genius (Macmillan, 1869), preface. 
Biometrika, Cambridge Univ. Press, the first number issued in 1901 
2