Econometrics and Psychometrics: Rivers Out of Biometry

The period 1895–1925 saw the origins and establishment of the fields that came to be called econometrics and psychometrics. I consider what these fields owed to biometry—the statistical approach to the biological problems of evolution—and make some comparisons between all three. I emphasize developments in biology and psychology, for these are less familiar to historians of econometrics. These developments are interesting to contemplate, for the biometricians and psychometricians were already discussing issues associated with the respective roles of statistical analysis and of subject matter theory, issues that became prominent in econometrics only much later.