When did Isaac Newton study equinoxes and perform an averaging of a set of data?
Isaac Newton studied equinoxes and performed an averaging of a set of data in 1700. This work appeared in his 1671 study on Newton's rings.
Questions about Regression analysis
Short answers, pulled from the story.
Who published the method of least squares in 1805 within a book about comet orbits?
Adrien-Marie Legendre published the method of least squares in 1805 within a book about comet orbits. Carl Friedrich Gauss followed with a publication in 1809 regarding the same astronomical problem.
What year did Francis Galton introduce the word regression to describe a biological phenomenon?
Francis Galton introduced the word regression in the 19th century to describe a biological phenomenon. His 1877 paper discussed the size of peas while his 1885 address covered human height measurements.
How long did it take to receive results from a single regression before 1970?
Before 1970, receiving results from a single regression sometimes took up to 24 hours. Rodney Ramcharan noted these delays in March 2006 when discussing why economists remained obsessed with the method.
When did R.A. Fisher weaken the assumption that the joint distribution of response and explanatory variables was Gaussian?
R.A. Fisher weakened this assumption in 1922. Udny Yule and Karl Pearson later extended Galton's work into a general statistical context before this change occurred.