A quantitative window on the history of statistics: topic-modelling 120 years of<i>Biometrika</i>
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract As one of the oldest continuously publishing journals in statistics (published since 1901), Biometrika provides a unique window onto the history of statistics and its epistemic development throughout the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries. While the early history of the discipline, with the works of key figures, such as Karl Pearson, Francis Galton, or Ronald Fisher, is relatively well known, the later (and longer) episodes of its intellectual development remain understudied. By applying digital tools to the full-text corpus of the journal articles (N = 5,596), the objective of this study is to provide a novel quantitative exploration of the history of the statistical sciences via an all-encompassing view of 120 years of Biometrika. To this aim, topic-modelling analyses are used and provide insights into the epistemic content of the journal and its evolution. Striking changes in the thematic content of the journal are documented and quantified for the first time, from the decline of Pearsonian and Weldonian biometrical research and the journal’s tight connection to biology in the 1930s to the rise of modern statistical methods beginning in the 1960s and 1970s. Newly developed approaches are used to infer author networks from publication topics. The resulting network of authors shows the existence of several communities, well-aligned with topic clusters and their evolution through time. It also highlights the role of specific figures over more than a century of publishing history and provides a first window onto the foundation, development, and diverse applications of the statistical sciences.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.013 | 0.046 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.012 | 0.016 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.009 | 0.010 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".