Referee's report by William Napier Shaw, on a paper 'On the correlation between barometric height' by F E Cave-Browne-Cave and Karl Pearson

Description

Sectional Committee not stated.

Recommended for publication in Proceedings. A complete paper on the subject might be criticised from two points of view. Firstly, the trustworthiness of the data, and secondly the effectiveness of the data in view of the labour involved in the computations. There are not enough details in the current paper to enable such criticisms to be made, nor is it desirable that there should be. This is avowedly a preliminary paper which is both useful and valuable.

If the method is to become available for general use the authors ought to describe said method. Suggests the authors state in not more than a page what 'correlation' means and what degree of magnitude of correlation shows effective interdependence. Also thinks they ought to show how correlative results would be affected by an uncertainty of .01 in barometric readings. This addition would enable the paper to reach a much larger readership as in its present form it requires technical mathematical knowledge and technical meteorological information. Suggests the following points of detail: the heading of table one in section four ought be more fully explained; 'winter' and 'summer' ought to be explained in the tables; the reference to the other copy of the American observations at the end of section two might with advantage 'be expressed differently'.

[Published in Proceedings of the Royal Society, 1902].

Endorsed on verso as received 10 June 1902.

Reference number

RR/15/313

Earliest possible date

09 June 1902

Physical description

Letter on paper

Page extent

3 pages

Format

Manuscript