Reginald Hawthorn Hooker (January 12, 1867 - June 2, 1944) English civil servant, statistician and meteorologist. Hooker was a pioneer in the application of correlation analysis to economics and agricultural meteorology. January 12 is the 12th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1867 (MDCCCLXVII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ... 2 June is the 153rd day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (154th in leap years), with 212 days remaining. ... 1944 (MCMXLIV) was a leap year starting on Saturday (the link is to a full 1944 calendar). ...

Reginald Hawthorn Hooker was born at Kew the fourth son of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, the distinguished botanist and friend of Charles Darwin. He was educated in Paris and at Trinity College, Cambridge where he read mathematics (Junior Optime BA 1889, MA 1893). In 1891 he went to the Royal Statistical Society as assistant secretary and sub-editor of its journal. In 1895 he joined the Statistical Branch of the Board of Agriculture; he remained with the Board, later re-named the Ministry of Agriculture, until his retirement in 1927. The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, usually referred to simply as Kew Gardens, are extensive gardens and botanical glasshouses between Richmond upon Thames and Kew in southwest London, England. ... Joseph Dalton Hooker Dr. Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, GCSI , OM , FRS , MD (June 30, 1817 – December 10, 1911) was an English botanist and traveller. ... In his lifetime Charles Darwin gained international fame as an influential scientist examining controversial topics. ... Full name The College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity Motto Virtus vera nobilitas Virtue is true Nobility Named after The Holy Trinity Previous names Kings Hall and Michaelhouse (until merged in 1546) Established 1546 Sister College(s) Christ Church Master The Lord Rees of Ludlow Location Trinity Street... At the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, a wrangler is a student who has completed the third year (called Part II) of the Mathematical Tripos with first-class honours. ... The Royal Statistical Society is a learned society for statistics and a professional body for statisticians in the UK. Founded in 1834 as the Statistical Society of London, it became the Royal Statistical Society in 1887. ... The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food was a UK government department, first created in September 1793 (relaunched in 1889) and called the Board of Agriculture. ...

Hooker was a pioneer in applying correlation analysis to socio-economic data. He worked very closely with his friend Udny Yule, who had developed some of the basic theory and was interested in the same kind of applications. Yule recalled how Hooker “joined with me in the early days of our acquaintance to form a very select Statistical Dining Club of two members, which met fairly regularly after meetings of the Society.” In the preface to the Introduction to the Theory of Statistics Yule gave fulsome thanks to Hooker for his help. In 1907 Hooker published a paper on weather and crops which R. A. Fisher later described as "magnificent." Hooker subsequently wrote a number of papers on meteorology. In 1920-1 he served as President of the Royal Meteorological Society. He was a very effective president, as Dines recalled. George Udny Yule (February 18, 1871 – June 26, 1951) was a Scottish statistician. ... Sir Ronald Fisher Sir Ronald Aylmer Fisher, FRS (February 17, 1890–July 29, 1962) was an extraordinarily talented evolutionary biologist, geneticist and statistician. ... The Royal Meteorological Society traces its origins back to April 3, 1850 when the British Meteorological Society was formed as a society the objects of which should be the advancement and extension of meteorological science by determining the laws of climate and of meteorological phenomena in general. ...

Like his contemporary and fellow civil servant, W. F. Sheppard, Hooker was an out-of hours statistician. Although his researches were connected with food and agriculture, he did not carry them out as part of his official duties. Indeed Yule commented, “The importance and value of Hooker’s scientific work ... was never, in my opinion, appreciated at its proper worth by the Ministry at the time when he was still in its service.” Yule also noted that, when Hooker retired, he chose to live “far away from any thoughts of the Ministry.” In his obituary Dines noted that meteorologists had not followed up Hooker’s work on weather and crops. Hooker is chiefly remembered today for the pioneering work on time series analysis in his papers of 1901-5. William Fleetwood Sheppard (November 20, 1863 - October 12, 1936) Australian-British civil servant, mathematician and statistician remembered for his work in finite differences, interpolation and statistical theory, known in particular for the eponymous Sheppard’s corrections. ...

Writings of R. H. Hooker

The bibliography in Yule's obituary lists 22 papers of which the following are a sample.

• On the Relation Between Wages and the Numbers Employed in the Coal Mining Industry, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Vol. 57, No. 4 (Dec., 1894), pp. 627-642.
• Correlation of the Marriage-Rate with Trade, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Vol. 64, No. 3 (Sep., 1901), pp. 485-492. (reprinted in The Foundations of Econometric Analysis edited by David F. Hendry and Mary S. Morgan, Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1995.)
• The Suspension of the Berlin Produce Exchange and its Effect upon Corn Prices, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Vol. 64, No. 4 (Dec., 1901), pp. 574-613. (reprinted in Classic Futures edited by Lester G. Telser, London : Risk, 2000.)
• On the Correlation of Successive Observations, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Vol. 68, No. 4 (Dec., 1905), pp. 696-703.
• (with G. U. Yule) Note on Estimating the Relative Influence of Two Variables upon a Third, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Vol. 69, No. 1 (Mar., 1906), pp. 197-200.
• Correlation of the Weather and Crops, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Vol. 70, No. 1 (Mar., 1907), pp. 1-51.
• Forecasting the Crops from the Weather, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, Vol. 47, (1921) pp. 75-99.
• The Weather and the Crops in Eastern England, 1885-1921, Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, Vol. 48, (1922) pp. 115-38.

Obituaries

• G. Udny Yule (1944) Reginald Hawthorn Hooker, M.A., Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Vol. 107, No. 1, pp. 74-77.
• J. S. Dines (1944) Obituary: Mr. R. H. Hooker, M. A., Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society, Vol. 70, pp. 232-233.

Discussions

• J. L. Klein (1997) Statistical Visions in Time, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• M. S. Morgan (1997) Searching for Causal Relations in Economic Statistics, in V. R. McKim & S. P. Turner (eds) Causality in Crisis, Notre Dame Ind: University of Notre Dame Press.

External links

For information about the Hooker family see

• Joseph Hooker's family

As a baby RHH was quite poorly and his father and Darwin exchanged anxious letters over his health

• The Darwin Correspondence Online Database