ABSTRACT

Truncated samples were first encountered quite early in the development of modem statistics by Sir Francis Galton ( 1897) in connection with an analysis of registered speeds of American trotting horses. Sample data were extracted from Wallace's Year Book, Vols. 8-12 (1892-1896), a publication of the American Trotting Association. Recorded data consisted of running times of horses that qualified for registration by trotting around a one-mile course in not more than 2 minutes and 30 seconds while harnessed to a two-wheeled cart carrying a weight of not less than 150 pounds including the driver. No records were kept for the slower, unsuccessful trotters, and their number thus remained unknown. In today's terminology, Galton's samples would be described as singly truncated on the right at a known point.