Miscellanea 
467 
III. On the Contingency between Occupation in the 
Case of Fathers and Sons. 
By EMILY PERRIN. 
It is a problem of some interest to determine how far ancestral bent and how far environ- 
mental conditions influence a man in his choice of occupation in life. The discussion of this 
problem has become feasible since the introduction of the new method of contingency into the 
statistical treatment of related variables*. By this method all questions of continuity and of 
scale in the variables are disj^ensed with. We fall back on the simplest and most fundamental of 
ideas — a measurement of the deviation from independent probability in the case of the two 
variable characters. The coefficient of contingency measures the degree of association or de- 
pendence between any two series and becomes more and more nearly the coefficient of correla- 
tion as the material approaches normality. In Professor Pearson's memoir on Contingency he 
deals in Illustration Dt with my first statistics of occujjational contingency. These covered 
775 cases of occupation for father and son classified into 14 groups ; the material was extracted 
from the Dictionary of National Biography. I have since doubled the number of extracted 
cases, and taken an additional 1550 from Who^s Who. I have kept the two materials quite 
distinct for comparative purposes. There are undoubtedly great difiFerences in their chai'acter, 
although both sources of record are of course subject to selection, i.e. either father or son must 
have reached a moderate amount of distinction to be entered in either work. The following 
Tables give my material. 
TABLE I. 
Contingency betiveen Occupations of Fatliers and Sons (from Who's Who). 
Occupation of Son. 
1 
T3 
2 
o 
a 
1 
Art 
Teacher, C 
Civil Serv 
Crafts 
s 
Agriculti 
Landowner 
Law 
Literatu 
Commer 
Medicin 
Navy 
Politics and ( 
"3 3 
m 
Totals 
Army 
148 
4 
20 
4 
3 
10 
12 
2 
2 
9 
9 
6 
229 
Art 
38 
2 
2 
1 
1 
7 
3 
1 
8 
63 
Teacher, Clerk,) 
Civil Servant i 
13 
36 
4 
11 
5 
10 
5 
2 
3 
2 
96 
Crafts ... 
2 
1 
1 
4 
Divinity 
58 
13 
52 
80 
5 
42 
53 
5 
15 
10 
16 
62 
411 
Agriculture . . . 
1 
2 
1 
3 
2 
1 
10 
Landownership 
42 
5 
17 
15 
20 
24 
13 
10 
10 
15 
30 
14 
215 
Law 
9 
5 
13 
11 
40 
16 
1 
12 
1 
8 
123 
Literature 
1 
5 
1 
2 
4 
17 
1 
2 
33 
Commerce 
4 
8 
6 
11 
19 
12 
33 
3 
1 
2 
17 
116 
Medicine 
15 
11 
11 
8 
9 
9 
3 
1 
33 
1 
3 
5 
109 
Navy 
25 
1 
4 
5 
3 
3 
1 
4 
16 
3 
2 
70 
Politics & Court 
3 
3 
1 
3 
1 
15 
26 
Scholarship | 
and Science i 
2 
1 
2 
1 
5 
3 
1 
1 
1 
28 
45 
Totals 
320 
0, 
168 
1 
152 
1 
42 
163 
155 
60 
86 
57 
90 
158 
1550 
* " Mathematical Contributions to the Theory of Evolution. XIII. On the Theory of Contingency 
and its Eelation to Association and Normal Correlation." By Karl Pearson. (Dulau & Co., London, 1904.) 
t hoc. cit. p. 32 iit acq. 
59—2 
