1. Gould, Stephen Jay. The mismeasure of man. WW Norton & Company, 1996. ONLY pp: 280-2, 286-288, 291-302, 347-350. This is Gould's treatment of Spearman, plus a 3-page addendum about a late 20th century revival, but minus two mathy bits (which is why I list the pages in 4 chunks).

Spearman invented PCA in order to come up with a single number representing "general intelligence". If of interest, see:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G_factor_(psychometrics)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Spearman
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal_component_analysis for more.

pp 272-277 ONLY of: Spearman, Charles. 'General Intelligence,' objectively determined and measured." The American Journal of Psychology 15, no. 2 (1904): 201-292, ( available at https://web.archive.org/web/20140407100036/http://www.psych.umn.edu/faculty/waller/classes/FA2010/Readings/Spearman1904.pdf )

3. Freedman, David. From association to causation : some remarks on the history of statistics. Journal de la société française de statistique, Volume 140 (1999) no. 3, pp. 5-32. http://www.numdam.org/item/JSFS_1999__140_3_5_0/ Freedman ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_A._Freedman ) was a great statistician as well as expository and historian of statistics. He writes so well! In this piece please focus on the parts about Yule (Sec 4, pp 11-14) but really the whole thing is great and sets you up well for the next several weeks (and life in general!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

1. description, prediction, and prescription

• PCA as description
• PCA as aid to prediction: "matrix methods...."
• causality problems (confounders)
  • cholera
  • poverty (yule)--figure 1 on p. 13; "invariance under proprosed interventions"
  • smoking
• "weak" and "strong" predictive power (same v diff. distribution)
• reification (in Spearman): Gould, 296

2. modeling assumptions: causality and shoe leather
3. scientism: "physics envy"

• Freedman
• Gould
  • on ranking and chain of being in Jensen: 349.

• Spearman: "we must venture to hope that the so long missing genuinely scientific foundation for psychology has at last been supplied"
• "Instead of continuing ineffectively to protest that high marks in Greek syntax aer no test as to the capacity of men to command troops or to administer provinces, we shall at last actually determine the precise accuracy of the various means of measuring General Intelligence" (1904, p. 277 ).

• Gould
  • fraud
  • correlation
    • simpler description
    • information
• Freedman (1999)
  • Mill (1843)?
  • Louis on pneumonia (1835)
  • Snow on cholera (1855) [outbreaks in 1848,1854]
    • https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Lambeth,+London,+UK/Southwark,+UK/Vauxhall,+London,+UK/@51.4969235,-0.1239767,14z/data=!4m20!4m19!1m5!1m1!1s0x487604bf22d62c1d:0xddc7888ebf4d6172!2m2!1d-0.1178424!2d51.4935082!1m5!1m1!1s0x4876035a26b7f145:0xd1c47a2b70881ec2!2m2!1d-0.087738!2d51.502781!1m5!1m1!1s0x487604f37390a219:0x261185c6bcdba9c2!2m2!1d-0.1207145!2d51.4886163!3e2
  • Yule (1899)
    • legendre (1805)+gauss (1809): astronomy, known model
    • footnote 25: "strictly speaking, for 'due to' read 'associate with'"
• Spearman
  • In many situations, of course, experiments are impractical or unethical.

1. pp 272-277 ONLY of: Spearman, Charles. "" General Intelligence," objectively determined and measured." The American Journal of Psychology 15, no. 2 (1904): 201-292, ( available at https://web.archive.org/web/20140407100036/http://www.psych.umn.edu/faculty/waller/classes/FA2010/Readings/Spearman1904.pdf )

2. Gould, Stephen Jay. The mismeasure of man. WW Norton & Company, 1996. ONLY pp: 280-2, 286-288, 291-302, 347-350.

3. Freedman, David A. "Linear statistical models for causation: A critical review." Encyclopedia of statistics in behavioral science (2005). ( available at https://www.wiley.com/legacy/wileychi/eosbs/pdfs/bsa598.pdf )

Examples:

• Hereditarians v environmentalists
• The Freedman examples

• ranking and circularity
  • intelligence
  • higher ed
• prediction
  • and causality
• significance
  • and causality
• (later: decision making)

• confusing excellent math for excellent modeling

• Eugenics

  • e.g., Spearman, Terman (senior), Galton, Goddard (xlator of Binet to English)

• Career

  • e.g., Spearman vs IQ testers

• Who might be motivated to reify $g$ for their ends?