Regression analysis
Análisis de la regresión
- Date
- 1805-1886 · confidence medium
- Place
- London, United Kingdom
- Credited to
- Francis Galton (concept and term); Adrien-Marie Legendre and Carl Friedrich Gauss (least-squares method)
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What was discovered
Galton coined 'regression' after observing that the height of children of very tall parents tends to move closer to the average, and with Karl Pearson and Udny Yule generalised the idea into a statistical framework built on Legendre and Gauss's least-squares method.
The mathematical method (least squares) and the conceptual framework (regression) have separate origins that converged in the late 19th century.
What it led to
- A basic statistical tool of the social sciences, economics and epidemiology
- Later development of correlation and multiple regression