Generating Cycles in a Century of Prices 59 



standard must be eliminated. This may be done 

 by finding what percentage the four-yearly is of the 

 ten-yearly average." ^ 



The numerical results of the application of this 

 method to the prices of wheat in England from 1760 to 

 1875 are given in Table IV and are graphed in Figure 16. 

 After Professor Poynting had made his computations 

 following the method which has just been described 

 and had written his paper, he had the good fortune to 

 have it read, before its publication, by Professor George 

 Gabriel Stokes - than whom there was probably no one 

 better equipped to pass judgment upon the mathe- 

 matical implications of the Poynting method of curve 

 smoothing. Professor Poynting's conclusions from the 

 observations of his eminent critic are given in these 

 summary sentences: 



" Thus the effect of the averaging process is practi- 

 cally to destroy all harmonics below five years, to 

 save over half the amplitude at six years, a greater 

 amount up to eight years, when about five-sixths is 



^Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, March, 1884, pp. 36, 37. 



2 "The golden age of mathematics and physics at Cambridge was 

 coincident with the scientific activity of George Gabriel Stokes (1819- 

 1903) which began in 1842, and extended, with but slightly diminished 

 vigor, to the end of the last century. Stokes' position as an investigator 

 is among the greatest, but his influence cannot be measured merely 

 by the record of his published work. He united two generations of 

 scientific workers by the love and veneration centered in their gratitude 

 for the assistance and encouragement which, with kindly and genuine 

 interest, he showered upon them out of the wealth of his knowledge 

 and experience. Even those who intellectually were his equals owed 

 much to his sound and impartial judgment. Turning away from the 

 grave which was closed over his life-long friend, Kelvin was heard to 

 say: ' Stokes is gone, and I shall never return to Cambridge.' " Schuster 

 and Shipley', Britain's Heritage of Science, p. 123. 



