Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk

Chapter 9

The Man with the Sprained Brain

Francis Galton (1822–1911) was a social snob who never worked to earn a living, except for a brief stint in a hospital during his early twenties.1 Yet he was one of the most charming and likable of the many characters mentioned in this account. He was Charles Darwin’s first cousin, an occasional inventor, and an avid explorer of parts of Africa where whites had never been seen. He made a seminal contribution to the theory of risk management, but he made that contribution in stubborn pursuit of an evil concept.

Measurement was Galton’s hobby—or, rather, obsession. “Wherever you can, count,” he would say.2 He took note of the size of heads, noses, arms, legs, heights, and weights, of the color of eyes, of the sterility of heiresses, of the number of times people fidgeted as they listened to lectures, and of the degree of color change on the faces of spectators at the Derby as they watched the horses run. He classified the degree of attractiveness of girls he passed on the street, pricking a hole in a left-pocket card when a girl was comely and pricking a right-pocket card when she was plain. In his “Beauty Map” of Britain, London girls scored highest; Aberdeen girls scored lowest. He examined 10,000 judges’ sentences and observed that most of them occurred at regular intervals of 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, and 24 years, while none appeared at 17 and only a few at 11 or 13. At a cattle exhibition, he tabulated the guesses of 800 visitors as to the ...