ERRATA — the History of Correlation
THE FOLLOWING ARE A LIST OF ERRATA THAT HAVE BEEN DISCOVERED IN THE BOOK TITLED THE HISTORY OF CORRELATION AFTER IT WAS PUBLISHED IN LATE 2024 BY THE CRC PRESS OF THE TAYLOR & FRANCIS PUBLISHING GROUP. THE ERRATA ARE ARRANGED IN ORDER BY PAGE NUMBER. IF YOU KNOW OF OTHER ERRATA, PLEASE FORWARD THEM TO ME, THE AUTHOR, JOHN NICHOLAS ZORICH, VIA EMAIL TO… JOHNZORICH@YAHOO.COM
NOTE: Some errata were noticed by me immediately after launch of this book on December 4, 2024. These errata were somehow caused by editorial process. I quickly brought these errata to the attention of the publisher, who agreed to stop production (some books had already shipped), to fix the file, and then to resume production. Therefore, in a real sense, there are two version of the 1st edition of this book. The errata below are annotated as to which of them were fixed in the revised 1st edition; all the other errata exist in both versions. NOTE: To be fair, a few errata were my own blunders (they are identified here below).
Page x (in the Preface):
The website URL mentioned in the last sentence of the Preface (just prior to the poem) is actually…
https://www.johnzorich.com/correlationbook
In other words, there’s no hyphen between “john” and “zorich”.
This erratum was corrected in the late-December-2024-revised 1st-edition.
Page xi (“Acknowledgments” page)
Melinda Baldwin reported by email to the author (on 2025-02-10) that “I will note in passing, for the purpose of any corrected or future editions, that I have not been at Harvard for some time; I’m now at the University of Maryland… [as an] Associate Professor of History, AIP Endowed Professor in History of Natural Sciences.” Not having confirmed her most recent position was my blunder.
Page 2:
In the italicized quotation given in the middle of the page, there should not be a space between the "c" and "a" in "hypothetical".
Page 9:
In the first large quotation, in the 5th line, there should not be a space between the “R” in “Roy. Soc…” and the apostrophe that precedes it. This was my blunder.
Page 10:
In the middle of the page, the 2-line partial sentence + partial quotation that starts “Therefore” and ends “called regression” should be followed not by one but three periods (i.e. not “.” but “…”). This was my blunder.
In the next 2 lines, the partial sentence + partial quotation that begins “could have” and ends “called regression” should be followed not by one but four periods (i.e. not “.” but “….” ). This was my blunder.
Page 58:
In the first sentence, “the first cousin” should be “a first cousin”.
Page 65 (in the “1872” section):
"Here, he described..." would be more clearly stated as "There, he described..."; this change is needed because of how the copy editor re-arranged the indentation of my texts on this page.
“…the correlation between forests and humidity” should be followed by a period, not a colon.
"The source and meaning of the term..." would be more clearly stated as "The source and meaning of that term..."; this change is needed because of how the copy editor re-arranged the indentation of my texts on this page.
"...however, this quote..." would be more clearly stated as "...however, that quote..."; this change is needed because of how the copy editor re-arranged the indentation of my texts on this page.
“…involves an Observational Correlation” should be followed by a period, not a colon.
Page 66 (at the top of the page):
"These are classic..." would be more clearly stated as "Those are classic..."; this change is needed because of how the copy editor re-arranged the indentation of my texts on this page.
Page 68 (at the bottom of the page)
The sentence “This is an Observational Correlation” would be more clearly stated as “That is an Observational Correlation”; this change is needed because of how the copy editor re-arranged the indentation of my texts on this page.
That same sentence should end with a period, not a colon.
Page 76:
At the top of the page, the third bulleted text (“Galton had previously…”) should be not indented, not bulleted, and not italicized.
Page 77:
Near the bottom of the page, the sentence that ends in “…’smoothed’ his data’” should end with a colon, not a semi-colon. This was my blunder.
Page 78:
At the bottom of the page, the sentence that ends in “…in Natural Inheritance that” should end with three periods (i.e. “that…”), not a colon. This was my blunder.
Page 85:
There should be two parentheses after "p.110", not just one. That is, the correct text should be...
"...(based upon which, Smith amazingly dated Galton’s discovery of correlation to 1877 (Johnson and Kotz, 1997, p. 110)).”
Page 89:
The character between "20" and "1888" in the 2nd section on this page should be a (short) dash not an a (long) em-dash.
Page 93:
In the middle of the page, the sentence that ends in “…to agree or disagree with him” should end with a period, not a colon.
This erratum was corrected in the late-December-2024-revised 1st-edition.
Page 103:
In the middle of the page, the sentence that ends in “the idea is even more frequently present than the phrase” should end with a period, not a colon.
This erratum was corrected in the late-December-2024-revised 1st-edition.In the middle of the page, the sentence that ends in “by Cuvier, Owen, and Darwin” should end with a period, not a colon.
This erratum was corrected in the late-December-2024-revised 1st-edition.
Page 104:
In the middle of the page, the sentence that ends in “given its location in Galton’s paper” should end with a period, not a colon.
This erratum was corrected in the late-December-2024-revised 1st-edition.In the middle of the page, the sentence that ends in “in his December 1888 paper” should end with a period, not a colon.
This erratum was corrected in the late-December-2024-revised 1st-edition.
Page 126:
The character between "3" and "1889" in the middle of this page should be a (short) dash not an a (long) em-dash.
Page 146:
10 lines from the bottom of the page, the word "pairs" should be "pair", that is, the line should read "pair of marks on Galton’s figure". This was my blunder.
Page 147:
10 lines from the top of the page, the italicized sentence "Despite that use of the un-hyphenated word, the titles of those tables each included the word co-relation not correlation" should all be regular (non italic) font.
Page 173:
In the first paragraph, the reference to “That 1886 paper” is given as “Galton 1888a”, which of course is wrong; that third “8” should have been a “6”, as in “…1886a”. This was my blunder — it is humorously ironic that this is a reference blunder in my text that discussed the reference blunder that Bowley made!
This erratum was corrected in the late-December-2024-revised 1st-edition.
Page 187:
In the middle of the page, the "1937s" should be changed to "1937's". The corrected sentence should begin like this..."Starting in 1937's 11th edition".
Page 192:
In the middle of the page, the title word "Phsycho" should be spelled "Psycho". That is, the correct title is "Psycho-Physics". This was my blunder.
Page 214:
In the 3rd line of the 2nd italicized quotation, the "i7s" should be "is" (i.e., remove the 7)
This erratum was corrected in the late-December-2024-revised 1st-edition.In the 7th line of the 4th italicized quotation, the "7are" should be "are" (i.e., remove the 7).
This erratum was corrected in the late-December-2024-revised 1st-edition.
Page 233:
The text at the bottom of the page should not be italicized. That is this text...
(p. 562; underlining added; in this example, X is the effect-value plotted on the vertical axis, and A is the cause-value plotted on the horizontal axis).
should be regular font (not italic).
Page 236:
The following text at the end of the first bullet at the top of the page should not be italicized. That is this text...
(notice that the correlation coefficient was not among those “three constants”).
should be regular font (not italic).
The following text at the end of the fourth bullet on the page should not be italicized. That is this text...
(Note: Leading zeros were not present in the source article; they have been added here to promote legibility.)
should be regular font (not italic).
Page 240:
In the quotation in the middle of the page, there should be a space before each period in the decimal fractions. That is, this text...
of.25, or.40, or.50, or.60
should be this text (which does contain periods between the word “of” or the word “or” and the following period):
of .25, or .40, or .50, or .60
Page 246:
In the 3rd line in the quotation at the bottom of the page, the singular word "task" should be plural, i.e. "tasks". The text should read...
"...one of the most difficult tasks in the..."
This was my blunder.
Page 263:
In the large quotation that starts with “Consider…” in the middle of the page, at the end of the first paragraph in that quotation, is a sentence that starts “We wish to make Σδ…”. The “2” that follows that text was published as a regular in-line number “2”; however, that 2 should be superscripted (to indicate squaring).
Page 268:
In the large quotation in the middle of this page, 2 lines were indented confusedly incorrectly.
THIS IS THE WAY THE TEXT WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED:
The correlation coefficient, for all its importance in the theory of statistics, is rather a difficult constant to interpret…. If in the two sequences of statistical values,
X data: X1, X2, X3……. Xn,
Y data: Y1, Y2, Y3……. Yn,
the X and Y sequences are affected by m + n equally probable causes of which
m are common to both, then the correlation coefficient is equal to
r = m/(m + n)
or, in other words, the correlation coefficient is the ratio of the common causes to the total number of causes. This very beautiful interpretation of the correlation coefficient is not easily proved... (p. 280; underlining added).
WHEREAS THIS IS THE WAY IT SHOULD BE (THE ONLY CHANGES ARE THE REDUCTION OF INDENTATION OF THE 2 LINES THAT START WITH "the X and Y sequences" AND "or, in other words"):
The correlation coefficient, for all its importance in the theory of statistics, is rather a difficult constant to interpret…. If in the two sequences of statistical values,
X data: X1, X2, X3……. Xn,
Y data: Y1, Y2, Y3……. Yn,
the X and Y sequences are affected by m + n equally probable causes of which
m are common to both, then the correlation coefficient is equal to
r = m/(m + n)
or, in other words, the correlation coefficient is the ratio of the common causes to the total number of causes. This very beautiful interpretation of the correlation coefficient is not easily proved... (p. 280; underlining added).
Page 277:
A partial sentence that should have appeared at the top of page 277 is missing (was deleted somehow). That deleted partial sentence is…
“Such a perfectly straight line as seen in Figure 8.3 is to be expected, based upon the fact that...”.
This erratum was corrected in the late-December-2024-revised 1st-edition.In the 8th line from the bottom of the page, the word “than” should be “that”; that is, the text should read “…the variance of Y that can be attributed…”. This was my blunder.
Page 287:
In the quotation near the top of the page (the one that starts "[The correlation coefficient]..."), there should be a space before each period in the decimal fractions. That is, this text...
of.80
and
of.40
should be this text (which does contain space between the word “of” and the following period):
of .80
and
of .40
Page 300:
The word "Chapters" at the end of the title on this page should be "Chapter" (i.e. the “s” at the end of that word should be deleted).