vi Tables for Statisticians and Biometricians 



Beside the cost of calculating these Tables, to which I have referred, must be 

 added the cost of printing them. I had to do this slowly as opportunity offered 

 in my Journal Biometrika, and the Tables as printed were moulded, in order 

 that stereos might be taken for reproduction. Even as it is, there are a number 

 of Tables in this volume, either printed here for the first time (e.g. Tables of the 

 Logarithm of the Factorial and of the Fourth Moment), or published here for the 

 first time (e.g. Tables of the G(r, v) Integrals), the setting up of which has 

 naturally been very expensive. 



From the beginning of this work in 1901* when the first of these Tables was 

 published and moulded, I have had one end in view, the publication, as funds 

 would permit, of as full a series of Tables as possible. It is needless to say that 

 no anticipation of profit was ever made, the contributors worked for the sake 

 of science, and the aim was to provide what was possible at the lowest rate we 

 could. The issue may appear to many as even now costly ; let me assure those 

 inclined to cavil, that to pay its way with our existing public double or treble 

 the present price would not have availed; we are able to publish because of the 

 direct aid provided by initial publication in Biometrika and by direct assistance 

 from the Drapers' Company Grant. Yet a few years ago when a reprint of these 

 Tables in America was only stopped by the threat to prevent the circulation of 

 the book in which they were to appear entering any country with which we had 

 a reasonable copyright law, I was vigorously charged with checking the progress 

 of science and acting solely from commercial ends ! Meanwhile without any leave, 

 large portions of these tables have been reprinted, sometimes without even citing 

 the originals, in American psychological text-books. Two Russian subjects have 

 reissued many of these Tables in Russian and Polish versions, and copies of their 

 works in contravention of copyright are carried into other European countries. 

 It does not seem to have occurred to these men of science that there was any- 

 thing blameworthy in depriving Biometrika of such increased circulation as it 

 obtained from being the sole locus of these Tables, nor did they see in their 

 actions any injury to science as a whole resulting from lessening my power to 

 publish other work of a similar character. It is a singular phase of modern science 

 that it steals with a plagiaristic right hand while it stabs with a critical left. 



The Introduction gives a brief description of each individual table ; it is by no 

 means intended to replace actual instruction in the use of the tables such as 



* When issuing their prospectus in the spring of 1901 the Editors of Biometrika promised to 

 provide " numerical tables tending to reduce the labour of statistical arithmetic" 



