Working with a friend and fellow emeritus faculty on a presentation about the birth of the field of statistics I ran across the statement that Ronald. A. Fisher had 9 children.  Two were male but seven were female.  Since the man was brilliant, and since he did experiments on sex ratios in offspring of mice and plants and chickens and other things….. do you suppose his wife (poor woman) was the unwitting, or perhaps willing, subject of some “in house” probability experiments, and the outcome was likely not what he expected.  Lest anyone forget, numbers alone do not tell the whole story.  Ha ha.

This reminds me of my time working with another wild-haired genius, Leland clark Jr. who in his investigations for artificial blood was willing to stretch out his arm and recieve a pint or two.

Scientists are an amazing breed.

And a word in addendum, this era presents a truly tragic story of a man who in an era of the beginning of dominance of scientific thought may have almost crossed the line into the extermination mentality, and white supremacy.  I retrospect it is perhaps alarming but understandable for the early 20th century to be steeped in the voodoo of the then newly discovered eugenics to think that there was a “superior” (that is superior in the darwinian sense) race, and “they” were it… since i have little doubt (but no absolute proof) that Fisher and Neyman were waging an antisemitic-white supremacist war all the while tragically recognizing their need to collaborate as two very great minds working on the same scientific problems.  To me that is tragic, yet comedic in the sense that we all give ourselves such credit for being the “fittest”  LOL.  sorry for my unschooled commentary on two statisticians… neither of whose work I understand, but whose motives are fresh and “in your face”.