mathematics

William Palin Elderton

William Palin Elderton is a mathematics topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand William Palin Elderton rather than just read about it. In short: Sir William Palin Elderton KBE PhD (Oslo) (1877–1962) was a British actuary who served as president of the Institute of Actuaries (1932–1934). Elderton also had a very long association with the statistical journal Biometrika.

Key takeaways

William Palin Elderton belongs to mathematics; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect William Palin Elderton to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of William Palin Elderton from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Sir William Palin Elderton KBE PhD (Oslo) (1877–1962) was a British actuary who served as president of the Institute of Actuaries (1932–1934). Elderton also had a very long association with the statistical journal Biometrika. In its early days he published several articles, and in 1935 he became chairman of the Biometrika Trust. In 1900 when he was training to be an actuary Elderton met Karl Pearson and was drawn into the University College statistical group. In 1902 Elderton computed the first tables of Pearson's chi-squared and in 1907 he published an exposition of the Pearson curves for actuaries. His sister Ethel M. Elderton worked for Pearson, and together the Eldertons wrote an introduction to the new ideas in statistics. She provided financial backing for Pearson's Anthropometric Laboratory, "his fourth laboratory". Elderton was an invited speaker in the International Congress of Mathematicians 1908, Rome.

Books W. Palin Elderton (1906) Frequency-Curves and Correlation. London: Charles and Edwin Layton, 172 pages. 2nd edition, 1927; 3rd edition, 1938; Elderton, William Palin (30 June 2011). 2011 pbk reprint of 1953 4th edition. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-60129-1. W. Palin Elderton and Ethel M. Elderton (1909) Primer of Statistics. London: A&C Black Ltd. 2nd edition, 1910; Elderton, Sir William Palin; Elderton, Ethel Mary (1912). 1912 3rd edition. W. Palin Elderton and Richard C. Fippard (1914)The Construction of Mortality and Sickness Tables : a Primer. London : A. & C. Black.

Papers Elderton, William Palin (1902). "Tables for Testing the Goodness of Fit of Theory to Observation". Biometrika. 1 (2): 155–163. doi:10.1093/biomet/1.2.155. William Palin Elderton (1949): A few statistics on the length of English words. In: Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A (General), Vol. CXII, Part IV, p. 436-445.

Elderton's work Karl-Heinz Best (2009): Wortlängen im Englischen. In: Glottometrics 19, p. 1-10. (PDF ram-verlag.) Review of Elderton's model of word length distributions proposing alternative models.) Peter Grzybek (2006): History and Methodology of Word Length Studies. The State of the Art. In: Peter Grzybek (ed.): Contributions to the Science of Text and Language: Word length studies and related issues. Dordrecht: Springer, S. 15-90. ISBN 978-1-4020-4067-2. (Grzybek discusses Elderton's model of word length distributions p. 19-26.)

References

Obituaries William P. Elderton FIA; CBE; KBE. TFA, 28 (1962-1964) p. 193-195. William P. Elderton FIA; CBE; KBE. JIA, 88 (1962) p. 245-252. Pearson, E. S. (1962). "William Palin Elderton, 1877–1962". Biometrika. 49 (3–4): 297–303. doi:10.1093/biomet/49.3-4.297. Best, Karl-Heinz (2009): William Palin Elderton (1877-1962). In: Glottometrics 19, p. 99-101. (PDF ram-verlag.) (In German) F. A. A. Menzler Sir William Palin Elderton, 1877–1962, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society. Series A (General), Vol. 125, No. 4 (1962), pp. 669–672

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with William Palin Elderton

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what William Palin Elderton claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In mathematics, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to William Palin Elderton before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about William Palin Elderton ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of William Palin Elderton

In research: William Palin Elderton appears in mathematics research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses William Palin Elderton in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: William Palin Elderton is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1877 births, 1962 deaths, 20th-century British statisticians, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for William Palin Elderton outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study William Palin Elderton in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what William Palin Elderton means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain William Palin Elderton out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is William Palin Elderton in simple terms?

Why does William Palin Elderton matter?

Because it connects several mathematics ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study William Palin Elderton?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on William Palin Elderton.