It is often claimed that while undertaking this work he discovered the statistical phenomenon of regression to the mean and that this discovery was a pivotal moment in the history of statistical thinking. Motivated by eugenic concerns, he studied patterns of human heredity. It was in the context of this debate and specifically by the biometricians, that the development of the statistical explanation was originally attributed to Galton.įrancis Galton (1822–1911) was a scientific polymath who made pioneering contributions to several fields, including the study of heredity in populations and the statistical analysis of data. The statistical explanation attributed to Galton appeared later, during the biometrician-mutationist debate in the early 1900s. This view had implications concerning both natural selection and eugenics. Galton used regression towards mediocrity to support the claim that some biological types were more stable than others and hence were resistant to evolutionary change. While the common narrative focuses almost exclusively on Galton’s statistics, our arguments emphasize the anthropological and biological questions that Galton addressed. Arguing against this claim, we show that Galton did not explain regression towards mediocrity statistically, and did not give up on his ideas regarding an inheritance process that caused offspring to revert to the mean. It is claimed that after 1885, Galton came to explain the fact that offspring deviated less from the mean value of the population than their parents did as a population-level statistical phenomenon and not as the result of the processes of inheritance.

A prevalent narrative locates the discovery of the statistical phenomenon of regression to the mean in the work of Francis Galton.

Galton statistics