VoxPopuli: Galton's cow weight-judging competition data

Description Usage Format Details Source References

Description

Distribution of 787 guesses in a cow weight-judging competition. These data was used by Galton to in a series of letters to Nature to illustrate the wisdom of crowds.

Usage

1

Format

A data frame with 19 rows and 3 columns.

name type description
quantile "numeric" Quantile of the distribution of guesses.
estimate "numeric" Value of the guess (lbs.)
normal "numeric" Quantile values of a normal distribution with a median of 1,207 lbs. and a probable error (half the interquartile range) of 37 lbs (standard deviation of 25 lbs).

Details

The actual weight of the cow was 1,198 pounds.

Source

Galton, Francis. 1907. "Vox Populi." Nature. doi:10.1038/075414a0

References

Galton, Francis. 1907. "One Value, One Vote." Nature. doi:10.1038/075414a0

Galton, Francis. 1907. "Ballot Box." Nature doi:10.1038/075509e0

Hooke, R. H. 1907. "Mean or Median." Nature. doi:10.1038/075487a0

Yule, G. Udny. 1907. "Mean or Median." Nature. doi:10.1038/075534b0

Kenneth W. Wallis. 2014. "Revisiting Francis Galton's Forecasting Competition" https://arxiv.org/pdf/1410.3989.pdf

Levy, D. M. and Peart, S. (2002). Galton's two papers on voting as robust estimation. Public Choice 113 357<e2><80><93>365.


jrnold/datums documentation built on May 20, 2019, 1 a.m.