Ronald Fisher
Ronald Fisher
Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher FRS, who published as R. A. Fisher, was an English statistician, and biologist, who used mathematics to combine Mendelian genetics and natural selection, helping to create a new Darwinist synthesis of evolution known as modern evolutionary synthesis, as well as a prominent eugenicist in the early part of his life...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionMathematician
Date of Birth17 February 1890
book men evolution
A book that I rate only second in importance in evolution theory to Darwin 's Origin (this as joined with its supplement Of Man), and also rate as undoubtedly one of the greatest books of the twentieth century
data issues body
Modern statisticians are familiar with the notion that any finite body of data contains only a limited amount of information on any point under examination; that this limit is set by the nature of the data themselves, and cannot be increased by any amount of ingenuity expended in their statistical examination: that the statistician's task, in fact, is limited to the extraction of the whole of the available information on any particular issue.
statistics procedures interpretation
... the actual and physical conduct of an experiment must govern the statistical procedure of its interpretation.
zero balance finals
The neutral zone of selective advantage in the neighbourhood of zero is thus so narrow that changes in the environment, and in the genetic constitution of species, must cause this zone to be crossed and perhaps recrossed relatively rapidly in the course of evolutionary change, so that many possible gene substitutions may have a fluctuating history of advance and regression before the final balance of selective advantage is determined.
book important genetics
This is perhaps the most important book on evolutionary genetics ever written
evolution natural natural-selection
Natural selection is not evolution.
men quality machines
We can set no limit to human potentialities; all that is best in man can be bettered; it is not a question of producing a highly efficient machine, ... but of quickening all the distinctly human features, all that is best in man, all the different qualities, some obvious, some infinitely subtle, which we recognize as humanly excellent.
knowledge science form
Experimental observations are only experience carefully planned in advance, and designed to form a secure basis of new knowledge.
science light biology
It was Darwin's chief contribution, not only to Biology but to the whole of natural science, to have brought to light a process by which contingencies a priori improbable are given, in the process of time, an increasing probability, until it is their non-occurrence, rather than their occurrence, which becomes highly improbable.
fundamentals may natural
We may consequently state the fundamental theorem of Natural Selection in the form: The rate of increase in fitness of any organism at any time is equal to its genetic variance in fitness at that time.
believe teaching men
I believe sanity and realism can be restored to the teaching of Mathematical Statistics most easily and directly by entrusting such teaching largely to men and women who have had personal experience of research in the Natural Sciences.
science support intellectual
The best causes tend to attract to their support the worst arguments, which seems to be equally true in the intellectual and in the moral sense.
may matter chance
The million, million, million ... to one chance happens once in a million, million, million ... times no matter how surprised we may be that it results in us.
sex two work-out
No practical biologist interested in sexual reproduction would be led to work out the detailed consequences experienced by organisms having three or more sexes; yet what else should he do if he wishes to understand why the sexes are, in fact, always two?