[R] Measurements of 3000 criminals

[(Ted Harding)]

On 31-Oct-06 Martin Maechler wrote:
>>>>>> "Jean" == Jean lobry <lobry at biomserv.univ-lyon1.fr>
>>>>>>     on Sat, 28 Oct 2006 13:07:04 +0200 writes:
>     >> Hallo everyone,
>     >> 
>     >> excuse me if this is not a genuine R question but I do
>     >> not know where to ask else.
>     >> 
>     >> Referring to e.g.
>     >> 
>     >> https://stat.ethz.ch/pipermail/r-help/2004-December/062114.html
>     >> 
>     >> I wonder if these measurements of 3000 criminals (raw
>     >> data) are available anywhere.
>     >> [...]
> 
>     Jean> Dietrich,
> 
>     Jean> I'm not sure, but this is perhaps what you want:
> 
>     Jean> crim <-
>     Jean>
> read.table("http://pbil.univ-lyon1.fr/R/donnees/criminals1902.txt")
>     Jean> [...]
> 
> Jean, this is really very nice, and given the historic
> importance of the data, I'd like to add this to the "official"
> R 'datasets'  (the standard data set package), with tribute to
> you and Anne-Béatrice, and the references.
> [...]

A further historical note. No doubt many R-helpreaders will
have recently received (e.g. via allstat) the announcement:

  RSS Highlands local group meeting, December 5:
  100 years of statistics in Aberdeen

  Dear all!

  This is a first announcement for a special meeting of the
  Highlands local group of the RSS celebrating the centenary
  of the first lecturer in Statistics at the University of
  Aberdeen (Dr William Robert Macdonell), one of the first
  in the UK.

The same W. R. Macdonell as published the data in question.

Being a centenary takes it back to 1906. Such biographic
information as I have been able to find says:

W. R. MACDONELL. Born October 16, 1852. Died May 15, 1916
  KER Biometrika.1917; 11: 281-283

So he was well into his 50s when so honoured, and had only
few years to go.

Somewhat to my surpise, the excellent Index of Biographies
of mathematicians and statisticians at the University of
St Andrews:

http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/BiogIndex.html

has nothing for him, despite his being a First for Scotland!

Best wishes to all,
Ted.

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E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding at nessie.mcc.ac.uk>
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Date: 04-Nov-06                                       Time: 19:32:50
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