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CHAPTER IV.

SCHEMES OF DISTRIBUTION AND OF FREQUENCY.

Fraternities and Populations to be treated as Units.-Schemes of Distribution and their Grades.-The Shape of Schemes is independent of the number of observations.-Data for Eighteen Schemes.-Application

of the method of Schemes to inexact Measures.-Schemes of Frequency.

Fraternities and Populations to be Treated as Units.The science of heredity is concerned with Fraternities and large Populations rather than with individuals, and must treat them as units. A compendious method is therefore requisite by which we may express the distribution of each faculty among the members of any large group, whether it be a Fraternity or an entire Population.

The knowledge of an average value is a meagre piece of information. How little is conveyed by the bald statement that the average income of English families is 1001. a year, compared with what we should learn if we were told how English incomes were distributed ; what proportion of our countrymen had just and only just enough means to ward off starvation, and what were the

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