“The purpose of the mathematical theory of statistics is to deal with the relationship between 2 or more variable quantities without assuming that one is a single-valued mathematical function of the rest. The statistician does not think a certain x will produce a single-valued y; not a causative relation but a correlation. The relationship between x and y will be somewhere within a zone and we have to work out the probability that the point (x,y) will lie in different parts of that zone. The physicist is limited and shrinks the zone into a line. Our treatment will fit all the vagueness of biology, sociology, etc. A very wide science.”

—  Karl Pearson

As quoted by E.S. Pearson, Karl Pearson: An Appreciation of Some Aspects of his Life and Work (1938) and cited in Bernard J. Norton, "Karl Pearson and Statistics: The Social Origins of Scientific Innovation" in Social Studies of Science, Vol. 8, No. 1, Theme Issue: Sociology of Mathematics (Feb.,1978), pp. 3-34.

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Karl Pearson65
English mathematician and biometrician 1857–1936

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