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The Normal Law of Error

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2016

Extract

The investigations of Professor Karl Pearson and his coadjutors on the applications of the theory of errors to statistics have greatly increased the importance and extent of the subject.

It is hoped that the following version of one of the methods of arriving at the so-called normal law of error may be of interest from an elementary point of view: affording, as it does, a simple application of the binomial theorem and some interesting graphical work.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Mathematical Association 1905 

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References

Page 242 of note * It is natural to ask why the square should he taken. Prof. Pearson, Grammar of Science, p. 386, cites the analogy of the radius of gjration k : k 2 being the mean square of the distance. Of course tile simple mean value or expectation of the total error is zero, for positive and negative errors of equal amounts are equally likely.

Page 243 of note * Of course the absolute chance of an error being exactly x is zero. The chance that the error lies between x and x + Δx is yΔx nearly.