Page:Logic of Chance (1888).djvu/54

24 each direction, and if we continue to accumulate our measures it will be found that they tend to lie continuously between these extremes; that is to say, that under those circumstances no intermediate height will be found to be permanently unrepresented in such a collection of measurements. Now suppose these heights to be marshalled in the order of their magnitude. What we always find is something of the following kind;—about the middle point between the extremes, a large number of the results will be found crowded together: a little on each side of this point there will still be an excess, but not to so great an extent; and so on, in some diminishing scale of proportion, until as we get towards the extreme results the numbers thin off and become relatively exceedingly small.

The point to which attention is here directed is not the mere fact that the numbers thus tend to diminish from the middle in each direction, but, as will be more fully explained directly, the law according to which this progressive diminution takes place. The word 'law' is here used in its mathematical sense, to express the formula connecting together the two elements in question, namely, the height itself, and the relative number that are found of that height. We shall have to enquire whether one of these elements is a function of the other, and, if so, what function.

§2. After what was said in the last chapter, it need hardly be insisted upon that the interest and significance of such investigations as these are almost entirely dependent upon the statistics being very extensive. In one or other of Quetelet's works on Social Physics will be found a selection of measurements of almost every element which the physical frame of man can furnish:—his height, his weight, the muscular power of various limbs, the dimensions of almost every