Capt. John Graunt

Sjoerd on 3 Jan 2005   Link to this

"A contemporary of Evelyn's, the self-made scientist-businessman John Graunt, created the tools that eventually allowed people to understand just how smoke and fires and other components of the world around us affect health. A prosperous merchant and art collector who lost everything in the Great Fire, Graunt was a master of assembling and making sense of ordinary information. He laid the foundation for the ways of categorizing, counting and rendering facts and figures that would later change the way people thought about the connections between health and the surrounding world. In 1662, Graunt published a short book, Natural and Political Observations made upon the Bills of Mortality, that summed up his years of sorting and analyzing who died, where, when and how. In immediate recognition of this work, Charles II personally recommended that Graunt be admitted to the Royal Society that same year. "

http://www.whensmokeranlikewater.com/about/CH2.htm

Sjoerd on 3 Jan 2005   Link to this

I found another bio at the link below. Interesting to note that Capt. Graunt used shorthand to write down sermons.

http://www.ac.wwu.edu/%7Estephan/Graunt/grauntb...

vicenzo on 25 Mar 2005   Link to this

In the chart: died of ague 1660 #2148
along with consumption as the leading cause of death and then dying from excessive drinking...zero
Observations on the Bills of Mortality
http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~stephan/Graunt/bills.html

table of casualty
http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~stephan/Graunt/chart.html

Ruben on 25 Mar 2005   Link to this

Graunt's portrait
http://www.stat.ucla.edu/history/people/graunt....

Nix on 25 Mar 2005   Link to this

From Graunt's entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography:

. . . .

Graunt's place in the history of statistical enquiry is based upon his Natural and Political Observations

Ruben on 26 Mar 2005   Link to this

the original for most of what we know about Graunt is "Aubrey's Brief Lives", that everybody is repeating, being the only information we have, discounting Pepys notes and his own book about demography.
The original was posted by the UCLA at:
http://www.stat.ucla.edu/history/aubrey.pdf

dirk on 25 Dec 2005   Link to this

Graunt's mortality statistics

"Death in London: Establishing Credibility — Who, What, Where, Why, When, and How?", Levine

An interesting modern analysis of Graunt's statistics, from a methodological point of view (part of a course), in PDF format:

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~mss/data%20analysis/0...
(scroll down to "STEM AND LEAF II")

or, direct to the PDF:
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~mss/data%20analysis/V...

in Aqua Scripto on 22 Apr 2006   Link to this

A slightly differing URL: from
Michael Robinson on Fri 21 Apr 2006, 10:31 am | Link
John Graunt/Grant

For a website devoted to Graunt, including John Aubrey’s biography, see:-

http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~stephan/Graunt/graunt.html