From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Udny Yule
Udny Yule
George Udny Yule In 1912 Yule moved to Cambridge University to a
newly created Lectureship in Statistics and he remained
Born 18 February 1871 (1871-02-18) in Cambridge for the rest of his life. During the First
Morham, Scotland
World War Yule worked for the army and then for the
Died 26 June 1951 (1951-06-27) (aged 80) Ministry of Food. A heart attack in 1931 left him semi-in-
Cambridge, England valided and led to his early retirement. His flow of publi-
Residence England cations almost ceased but, in the 1940s he found new in-
terests, one of which led to a book, The Statistical Study of
Citizenship United Kingdom Literary Vocabulary.
Nationality British
Fields Statistics, Genetics Scholarship
Institutions University College London, Cambridge Yule was a prolific writer, the highlight of his publica-
University tions being perhaps the textbook Introduction to the Theory
Alma mater University College, London
of Statistics, which went through fourteen editions. He
was active in the Royal Statistical Society, was awarded
Known for Yule distribution, its Guy Medal in Gold in 1911, and served as its president
Notable Guy Medal, in 1924-26.
awards Yule’s first paper on statistics appeared in 1895: "On
the Correlation of Total Pauperism with Proportion of Out-re-
George Udny Yule FRS (18 February 1871 – 26 June lief". Yule was interested in applying statistical tech-
1951),[1] usually known as Udny Yule was a British sta-
Yule, niques to social problems and he quickly became a mem-
tistician, born at Beech Hill, a house in Morham near ber of the Royal Statistical Society. For many years the
Haddington, Scotland and died in Cambridge, England. only members interested in mathematical statistics were
His father, also George Udny Yule, and a nephew, were Yule, Edgeworth and Bowley. In 1897–99 Yule wrote im-
knighted. His uncle was the noted orientalist Sir Henry portant papers on correlation and regression); after 1900
Yule. The Yule family had a reputation for scholarship he worked on a parallel theory of association. His ap-
and administration. Yule came from an established Scot- proach to association was quite different from Pearson’s
tish family composed of army officers, civil servants, and relations between them deteriorated. Yule had broad
scholars, and administrators. interests and his collaborators included the agricultural
In 1899, Yule married May Winifred. The marriage meteorologist R. H. Hooker, the medical statistician Ma-
was annulled in 1912, there having been no children. [2] jor Greenwood and the agricultural scientist Sir Frank
Engledow. Yule’s sympathy towards the newly rediscov-
Education and teaching ered Mendelian theory of genetics led to several papers.
In the 1920s Yule wrote three influential papers on
Udny Yule was educated at Winchester College and at the time series analysis, "On the time-correlation problem"
age of 16 at University College London where he read (1921), a critique of the variate difference method, "Why
engineering. After a year in Bonn doing research in ex- Do We Sometimes Get Nonsense Correlations between
perimental physics under Heinrich Rudolf Hertz, Yule re- Time-series?" (1926), an investigation of a form of spu-
turned to University College in 1893 to work as a demon- rious correlation, and "On a Method of Investigating Pe-
strator for Karl Pearson, one of his former teachers. Pear- riodicities in Disturbed Series, with Special Reference to
son was beginning to work in statistics and Yule followed Wolfer’s Sunspot Numbers" (1927), which used an au-
him into this new field. Yule progressed to an assistant toregressive model to model the sunspot time series in-
professorship but he left in 1899 to a better-paid position stead of the established periodogram method of Schus-
as secretary to an examination board. He continued to ter.
publish articles and also a very influential textbook, In- In 1925 Yule published the paper "A Mathematical
troduction to the Theory of Statistics (1911); his book was Theory of Evolution, based on the Conclusions of Dr. J. C.
based on the lectures he gave as the Newmarch lecturer Willis, F.R.S.",[3] where he proposes a stochastic process
at University College. that leads to a distribution with a power-law tail — in this
case, the distribution of species and genera. This was lat-
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Udny Yule
Academic offices
Preceded by President of the Royal Statistical Society Succeeded by
Alfred Emmott 1924–1926 Edgar Vincent
er called the Yule process, but is now better known as of Notation". Proceedings of the Royal Society A:
preferential attachment. Herbert Simon dubbed the re- Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 79
sulting distribution the Yule distribution in his honor. (529): 182–126. doi:10.1098/rspa.1907.0028.
• G. Udny Yule Introduction to the Theory of Statistics
Assessment London Griffin 1911.
• Yule, G. U. (1927). "On a Method of Investigating
Frank Yates culminated his 1952 obituary of Yule by say- Periodicities in Disturbed Series, with Special
ing: Reference to Wolfer’s Sunspot Numbers".
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A:
“To summarize we may, I think, justly conclude Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 226
that though Yule did not fully develop any com- (636–646): 267–226. doi:10.1098/rsta.1927.0007.
pletely new branches of statistical theory, he took
the first steps in many directions which were later
to prove fruitful lines for further progress… He can References
indeed rightly claim to be one of the pioneers of [1] George Yule.
Yates, F. (1952). "George Udny Yule 1871-1951".
modern statistics”.[4] Obituary Notices of Fellows of the Royal Society 8 (21):
308. doi:10.1098/rsbm.1952.0020.
Yule made important contributions to the theory and [2] annullment: Yates, 1952
practice of correlation, regression, and association, as [3] Yule, G. U. (1925). "A Mathematical Theory of
well as to time series analysis. He pioneered the use of Evolution, Based on the Conclusions of Dr. J. C.
preferential attachment stochastic processes to explain Willis, F.R.S". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal
the origin of power law distribution. The Yule distribu- Society B: Biological Sciences 213 (402–410): 21–23.
tion, a discrete power law, is named after him. doi:10.1098/rstb.1925.0002.
Although Yule taught at Cambridge for twenty years, [4] pioneer of modern statistics: Yates 1952, p. 320
he had little impact on the development of statistics
there. M. S. Bartlett recalled him as a "mentor" but his fa-
mous association with Maurice Kendall, who revised the External links
Introduction to the Theory of Statistics, only came about af- • Royal Society citation
ter Kendall had graduated. • O’Connor, John J.; Robertson, Edmund F., "Udny
Yule", MacTutor History of Mathematics archive,
Selected works University of St Andrews, http://www-
history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/Biographies/
• Yule, G. U. (1896). "On the Significance of Bravais’ Yule.html .
Formulae for Regression, &c., in the Case of Skew • George Udny Yule: Statistical Scientist
Correlation". Proceedings of the Royal Society of London • Portrait
60:
(1854-1905) 60 477–426. doi:10.1098/rspl.1896.0075.
Persondata
• Yule, G. U.; Pearson, K. (1901). "On the Theory of
Consistence of Logical Class-Frequencies, and Its Name Yule, George Udny
Geometrical Representation". Philosophical Alternative names
Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Short description British mathematician
Physical and Engineering Sciences 197 (287–299): 91.
Date of birth 18 February 1871
doi:10.1098/rsta.1901.0015.
• Yule, G. U. (1900). "On the Association of Attributes Place of birth Scotland
in Statistics: With Illustrations from the Material of Date of death 26 June 1951
the Childhood Society, &c". Philosophical Transactions Place of death Cambridge
of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and
Engineering Sciences 194 (252–261): 257–226.
doi:10.1098/rsta.1900.0019.
• Yule, G. U. (1907). "On the Theory of Correlation for
any Number of Variables, Treated by a New System
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Udny Yule
Categories:
• 1871 births
• 1951 deaths
• People from Haddington, East Lothian
• 20th-century mathematicians
• Anglo-Scots
• British statisticians
• British mathematicians
• Alumni of University College London
• Academics of University College London
• Old Wykehamists
• Presidents of the Royal Statistical Society
• Winners of the Guy Medal in Gold
• Fellows of the Royal Society
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