“After much consideration and many inquiries, I determined, in 1885, on experimenting with sweet peas, which were suggested to me both by Sir Joseph Hooker and by Mr. Darwin. …The result clearly proved Regression; the mean Filial deviation was only one-third that of the parental one, and the experiments all concurred. The formula that expresses the descent from one generation of a people to the next, showed that the generations would be identical if this kind of Regression was allowed for.”

Source: Memories of My Life (1908), Ch. XX Heredity (1909 ed.)

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Francis Galton 14
British polymath: geographer, statistician, pioneer in euge… 1822–1911

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