| Description | <p>Letters to Pearson from W S Gosset, also known by the pen name "Student". The letters were found arranged chronologically into folders.</p>
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<p>Folder 1: 1907-1910. Letters regarding his taking charge of the Guinness experimental brewery; statistical work; a visit to Beaver's barley growing nursery, and the experiments conducted there; the Department of Agriculture "Change of Seed" experiment; Bateson's British Association lectures on Mendelian ratios and colour blindness; selection in Barley; the construct of a pedigree for a colour-blind family; requesting Pearson's advice on correlation methods; collecting wasp specimens; statistical work for Arthur Guinness Son & Co.; work on Elderton's contingency tables, and their application to bee-keeping; correlation amongst individuals in fixed populations, and coefficients of variation as applied to crop planting. Enclosed are data cards bearing analytical results on six criteria for barley and malt crops.</p>
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<p>Folder 2: 1911-1912. Letters regarding the use of statistics in debates concerning alcoholism and the temperance movement; Gosset's work on the "Rank" correlation method; wasp breeding; his attempts to cross-breed strawberries; his proof for the formulae for the frequency distribution of z [later known as Student's T-Distribution]; tuberculosis statistics; the question of correlating differences, with reference to Peake's economic correlations; work with R A Fisher; the problems of secular variation when studying correlation in tuberculosis cases. Enclosed with the letters is a photograph of Gosset's brothers with their children.</p>
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<p>Folder 3: 1914-1919. Letters regarding Gosset's work on the correlation of differences; equations for determining crop yields; computation work for Pearson; the effect of the First World War on the brewing methods used by Guinness; further research into binomial and distribution curves, and Poisson distribution; advising Pearson on the distribution of experiments; regarding Major Leonard Darwin's definition and usage of the word "correlation"; Gosset's contribution to papers in <i>Biometrika</i>; work on Greenwood's lencocyte distribution; and regarding his paper "Explanation of deviations from Poisson's Law", <i>Biometrika</i> 12, (1919) [under the pen name "Student"].</p>
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<p>Folder 4: 1924. Letters informing Pearson that he cannot reveal commercially sensitive information or supply figures on barley valuation; regarding the Guiness method of barley analysis; experiments at Rothamstead to test yield and quality under different manurial conditions; statistical methods used in the brewing industry; and regarding Lancaster's paper "Report on the Experiments on the Influence of Soil, Season and Manuring on the Quality and Growth of Barley as Indicated by the Malts made therefrom", <i>Journal of the Institute of Brewing</i>, 30, (March 1924), pp. 162-81 [enclosed]. </p>
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<p>Folder 5: 1925. Letters regarding Lancaster's paper on barley; enclosing letters detailing the date and number form visualisations of various people; and with comments on Pearson's equations.</p>
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<p>Folder 6: 1927, 1932, and 1935. Letters regarding the paper "Errors of Routine Analysis" [published under the name Student], and the definition of Kurtosis used within it [ordinate and range tables enclosed]; regarding Pearson and Ida McLearn's proof "Supplement to Errors of Routine Analysis" [enclosed, not published]; regarding Pearson's criticism of student's t-distribution, with enclosed notes referencing its application to data on trials of dextro and laevo hyoscyamine; and regarding Gosset's work on the Half Drill Strip paper.</p> |