Galton's data on the heights of parents and their children, by child

This data set lists the individual observations for 934 children in 205 families on which Galton (1886) based his cross-tabulation.

In addition to the question of the relation between heights of parents and their offspring, for which this data is mainly famous, Galton had another purpose which the data in this form allows to address: Does marriage selection indicate a relationship between the heights of husbands and wives, a topic he called assortative mating? Keen [p. 297-298](2010) provides a brief discussion of this topic.

Usage

data(GaltonFamilies)

Format

A data frame with 934 observations on the following 8 variables.

family: family ID, a factor with levels 001-204
father: height of father
mother: height of mother
midparentHeight: mid-parent height, calculated as (father + 1.08*mother)/2
children: number of children in this family
childNum: number of this child within family. Children are listed in decreasing order of height for boys followed by girls
gender: child gender, a factor with levels female male
childHeight: height of child

Details

Galton's notebook lists 963 children in 205 families ranging from 1-15 adult children children. Of these, 29 had non-numeric heights recorded and are not included here.

Families are largely listed in descending order of fathers and mothers height.

Source

Galton's notebook, http://www.medicine.mcgill.ca/epidemiology/hanley/galton/notebook/, transcribed by Beverley Shipley in 2001.

References

Galton, F. (1886). Regression Towards Mediocrity in Hereditary Stature Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 15, 246-263

Hanley, J. A. (2004). "Transmuting" Women into Men: Galton's Family Data on Human Stature. The American Statistician, 58, 237-243. See: http://www.medicine.mcgill.ca/epidemiology/hanley/galton/ for source materials.

Keen, K. J. (2010). Graphics for Statistics and Data Analysis with R, Boca Raton: CRC Press, https://www.unbc.ca/keen/graphics-for-statistics-and-data-analysis-with-r.

Examples

data(GaltonFamilies)
str(GaltonFamilies)
#> 'data.frame':	934 obs. of  8 variables:
#>  $ family         : Factor w/ 205 levels "001","002","003",..: 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 3 3 ...
#>  $ father         : num  78.5 78.5 78.5 78.5 75.5 75.5 75.5 75.5 75 75 ...
#>  $ mother         : num  67 67 67 67 66.5 66.5 66.5 66.5 64 64 ...
#>  $ midparentHeight: num  75.4 75.4 75.4 75.4 73.7 ...
#>  $ children       : int  4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 2 2 ...
#>  $ childNum       : int  1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 ...
#>  $ gender         : Factor w/ 2 levels "female","male": 2 1 1 1 2 2 1 1 2 1 ...
#>  $ childHeight    : num  73.2 69.2 69 69 73.5 72.5 65.5 65.5 71 68 ...

## reproduce Fig 2 in Hanley (2004)
library(car)
scatterplot(childHeight ~ midparentHeight | gender, data=GaltonFamilies, 
    ellipse=TRUE, levels=0.68, legend.coords=list(x=64, y=78))
#> Warning: "levels" is not a graphical parameter
#> Warning: "legend.coords" is not a graphical parameter
#> Warning: "levels" is not a graphical parameter
#> Warning: "legend.coords" is not a graphical parameter
#> Warning: "levels" is not a graphical parameter
#> Warning: "legend.coords" is not a graphical parameter
#> Warning: "levels" is not a graphical parameter
#> Warning: "legend.coords" is not a graphical parameter
#> Warning: "levels" is not a graphical parameter
#> Warning: "legend.coords" is not a graphical parameter
#> Warning: "levels" is not a graphical parameter
#> Warning: "legend.coords" is not a graphical parameter


# multiply daughters' heights by 1.08
GF1 <- within(GaltonFamilies, 
              {childHeight <- ifelse (gender=="female", 1.08*childHeight, childHeight)} )
scatterplot(childHeight ~ midparentHeight | gender, data=GF1, 
    ellipse=TRUE, levels=0.68, legend.coords=list(x=64, y=78))
#> Warning: "levels" is not a graphical parameter
#> Warning: "legend.coords" is not a graphical parameter
#> Warning: "levels" is not a graphical parameter
#> Warning: "legend.coords" is not a graphical parameter
#> Warning: "levels" is not a graphical parameter
#> Warning: "legend.coords" is not a graphical parameter
#> Warning: "levels" is not a graphical parameter
#> Warning: "legend.coords" is not a graphical parameter
#> Warning: "levels" is not a graphical parameter
#> Warning: "legend.coords" is not a graphical parameter
#> Warning: "levels" is not a graphical parameter
#> Warning: "legend.coords" is not a graphical parameter


# add 5.2 to daughters' heights 
GF2 <- within(GaltonFamilies, 
              {childHeight <- ifelse (gender=="female", childHeight+5.2, childHeight)} )
scatterplot(childHeight ~ midparentHeight | gender, data=GF2, 
    ellipse=TRUE, levels=0.68, legend.coords=list(x=64, y=78))
#> Warning: "levels" is not a graphical parameter
#> Warning: "legend.coords" is not a graphical parameter
#> Warning: "levels" is not a graphical parameter
#> Warning: "legend.coords" is not a graphical parameter
#> Warning: "levels" is not a graphical parameter
#> Warning: "legend.coords" is not a graphical parameter
#> Warning: "levels" is not a graphical parameter
#> Warning: "legend.coords" is not a graphical parameter
#> Warning: "levels" is not a graphical parameter
#> Warning: "legend.coords" is not a graphical parameter
#> Warning: "levels" is not a graphical parameter
#> Warning: "legend.coords" is not a graphical parameter


#########################################
# relationship between heights of parents
#########################################

Parents <- subset(GaltonFamilies, !duplicated(GaltonFamilies$family))

with(Parents, {
  sunflowerplot(mother, father, rotate=TRUE, pch=16, 
     xlab="Mother height", ylab="Father height")
  dataEllipse(mother, father, add=TRUE, plot.points=FALSE, 
     center.pch=NULL, levels=0.68)
  abline(lm(father ~ mother), col="red", lwd=2)
  }
  )