14 Facts About Udny Yule

George Udny Yule, CBE, FRS, usually known as Udny Yule, was a British statistician, particularly known for the Yule distribution and proposing the preferential attachment model for random graphs.

Udny Yule came from a Scottish family composed of army officers, civil servants, scholars, and administrators.

Udny Yule's father, Sir George Udny Yule was a brother of the noted orientalist Sir Henry Yule.

Udny Yule was educated at Winchester College and at the age of 16 at University College London where he read engineering.

Pearson was beginning to work in statistics and Udny Yule followed him into this new field.

Udny Yule progressed to an assistant professorship but he left in 1899 to a better-paid position as secretary to an examination board, working under Philip Magnus at the City and Guilds Institute.

In 1902 Udny Yule became Newmarch lecturer in statistics at University College, a position he held together with his post at the City and Guilds Institute.

Udny Yule continued to publish articles and wrote an influential textbook, Introduction to the Theory of Statistics, based on his lectures.

In 1912 Udny Yule moved to Cambridge University to a newly created Lectureship in Statistics and he remained in Cambridge for the rest of his life.

Udny Yule was a prolific writer, the highlight of his publications being perhaps the textbook Introduction to the Theory of Statistics, which went through fourteen editions and was published in several languages.

Udny Yule was interested in applying statistical techniques to social problems and he quickly became a member of the Royal Statistical Society.

Udny Yule compiled a table of the number of existent species in each genus of flowering plants, and the same for the Rubiaceae, and for the Chrysomelid beetles.

Udny Yule made important contributions to the theory and practice of correlation, regression, and association, as well as to time series analysis.

Udny Yule pioneered the use of preferential attachment stochastic processes to explain the origin of power law distribution.