Mayo-Smith, Richmond

Mayo-Smith, Richmond,

1854–1901, American statistician, b. Troy, Ohio, grad. Amherst, 1875. After graduation he studied for two years in Germany. From 1877 to 1901 he taught at Columbia. He is best known as a pioneer in the teaching of statistics and the application of statistics to social science. He also worked directly in economics. After 1886 he was an editor of the Political Science Quarterly, and he was one of the founders (1885) of the American Economic Association. His principal works are Science of Statistics (2 vol., 1895–99; issued also as Statistics and Sociology and Statistics and Economics) and Emigration and Immigration (1890).