It is a reproduction of the data set used by Galton in 1885 to study the correlation between the parent's height and their children. Galton introduced the concept of correlation indeed few years later in 1888. He also suggested the use of the regression line, and was the first to describe the so-called common phenomenon of regression toward the mean, which he first observed in his experiments on the size of the seeds of successive generations of peas.
Usage
data(galton)
Arguments
Details
Regression analysis is the statistical method most often used in
political science research. The reason is that most scholars are
interested in identifying ``causal'' effects from non-experimental
data. Regression is the method for doing this.
The term ``Regresssion'' (1889) Sir Francis Galton investigated the
relationship between body size of fathers and sons. Thereby he
``invented'' regression analysis. He estimated:
$S_s = 85.7 + 0.56S_F$
This means that the size of the son regresses towards the
mean. Therefore, he named his method regression.
References
Francis Galton (1886) Regression Towards Mediocrity in Hereditary Stature. The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 15, pp. 246--263.
James A. Hanley (2004) Transmuting women into men: Galton's family data on human stature. The American Statistician,58(3), 237-243.