The measurement of linkage in heredity / by K. Mather.

  • Mather, Kenneth, 1911-1990.
Date:
[1938]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: The measurement of linkage in heredity / by K. Mather. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    9/152 (page V)
    PREFACE REGOR MENDEL did not use probability methods in the analysis of his classical experiments, but after the rediscovery of his work, at the beginning of this century, the application of such a technique was soon recog nized as a necessary part of genetical analysis. The problems at first were chiefly involved with the testing of the significance of departures from expected ratios, but, with the discovery of link age, questions of estimation became equally important. The absence of a suitable statistical technique is one of the prime causes of the failure to understand linkage and linkage groups during the years before the Drosophila technique of backcrossing was extensively practised, and the true relations of coupling and repulsion realized. Since that time statistical methods have become more and more favoured by genetical workers and are to-day more than ever necessary for genetical analysis. Now statistics, like genetics, is a growing science and the crude and often arbitrary methods of yesterday have been superseded and rendered redundant by the development of more exact and more adaptable techniques. This is largely a result of the work of R. A. Fisher and his associates. In some branches of biology, as for example agronomical experimentation, such re