Regression towards the Meanie

[steepholm]

I am hauling this out of the Facebook oubliette so that I can leave it here with the appropriate tag - and of course for those who don't read my FB.

I've always felt a bit sorry for my first cousin (albeit 4 times removed) Louisa, being married to Francis Galton: having the founder of eugenics as your husband can't have been easy. But this little experiment seems especially hard to take...



I don't say that Francis Galton is the most sinister of the husbands the women of my family married in the nineteenth century - that honour must surely go to Peter Augustus Russell de Linnoy La Fargue - but this is how I now picture the celebrated statistician:

Comments

[cmcmck]

And what is even more disturbing is that as a theory, it's making something of a comeback among racists and class theorists of all stripes.

[steepholm]

Yep. This example is just 'Snog, Marry Avoid' for the scientific gentry, but of course he and others extended it...

[hunningham]

And I have just been & read your entry on La Fargue and I am chilled. Just that one little line "and his wife trembled when she saw him coming."

[steepholm]

With domestic violence in the news again, it seems horribly topical.

[poliphilo]

I love how Literally Anyone continues on her way, happily unaware that Galton is phwoaring after her

[steepholm]

As was no doubt the case in reality!

[lilliburlero]

I can vividly picture the number of fucks the quines of Aberdeen would give about Francis Galton's opinion of their looks...

[steepholm]

No doubt he would have logged those fucks dutifully, and displayed them on a bar chart.