Mathematician:William Fleetwood Sheppard

Mathematician

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.

Nationality

Australian

History

• Born: 20 November 1863 near Sydney, Australia
• Died: 12 October 1936

Theorems and Definitions

• Sheppard's Correction

Definitions of concepts named for William Fleetwood Sheppard can be found here.

Publications

• 1897: On the Calculation of the Average Square, Cube, of a Large Number of Magnitudes (J.R. Stat. Soc. Vol. 60: pp. 698 – 703)  www.jstor.org/stable/2979715
• 1898: On the Calculation of the Most Probable Values of Frequency Constants for data arranged according to Equidistant Divisions of a Scale (Proc. London Math. Soc. Vol. 29: pp. 353 – 380)
• 1899: On the Application of the Theory of Error to Cases of Normal Distribution and Normal Correlation (Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Ser. A Vol. 192: pp. 101 – 167 + 531)
• 1907: Table of Deviates of the Normal Curve (Biometrika Vol. 5: pp. 404 – 406)  www.jstor.org/stable/2331691
• 1921: Reduction of Error by Linear Compounding (Phil. Trans. R. Soc. Ser. A Vol. 221: pp. 199 – 237)
• 1923 From Determinant to Tensor

Sources

• John J. O'Connor and Edmund F. Robertson: "William Fleetwood Sheppard": MacTutor History of Mathematics archive