Galton’s sweet peas (Data file: galtonpeas) Many of the ideas of regression first appeared in the work of Sir Francis Galton (1822–1911) on the inheritance of characteristics from one generation to...

Galton’s sweet peas (Data file: galtonpeas) Many of the ideas of regression first appeared in the work of Sir Francis Galton (1822–1911) on the inheritance of characteristics from one generation to the next. In Galton (1877), he discussed experiments on sweet peas. By comparing the sweet peas produced by parent plants to those produced by offspring plants, he could observe inheritance from one generation to the next. Galton categorized parent plants according to the typical diameter of the peas they produced. For seven size classes from 0.15 to 0.21 inches, he arranged for each of nine of his friends to grow 10 plants from seed in each size class; however, two of the crops were total failures. A summary of Galton’s data were later published in Pearson (1930). The data file includes Parent diameter, Progeny diameter, and SD the standard deviation of the progeny diameters. Sample sizes are unknown but are probably large.