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Burnside’s engagement with the “modern theory of statistics”

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Abstract

The group theorist William Burnside devoted much of the last decade of his life to probability and statistics. The work led to contact with Ronald Fisher who was on his way to becoming the leading statistician of the age and with Karl Pearson, the man Fisher supplanted. Burnside corresponded with Fisher for nearly three years until their correspondence ended abruptly. This paper examines Burnside’s interactions with the statisticians and looks more generally at his work in probability and statistics.

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  1. Economics Division, School of Social Sciences, University of Southampton, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK

    John Aldrich

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Correspondence to John Aldrich.

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Communicated by J.J. Gray.

I am grateful to June Barrow-Green and Tony Mann for showing me important letters, to Susan Woodburn, Elise Bennetto and Jeniffer Beauchamps of the University of Adelaide for help with letters to Fisher and to Jonathan Harrison of St. John’s Cambridge for help with letters to Baker and White. Peter Neumann, the editor and a referee made helpful comments on an earlier draft.

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Aldrich, J. Burnside’s engagement with the “modern theory of statistics”. Arch. Hist. Exact Sci. 63, 51–79 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00407-008-0036-8

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