ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION William Stanley Jevons, a self-claimed revolutionary fighting against “the noxious influence of authority”, brought various innovations to economic science. The marginal utility theory of exchange, of course, was among them and has been cited the most. His persistent promotion of mathematical economics has also been noticed. But there was another line of economic inquiries which occupied Jevons for the whole period of his career. It may be called statistical economics. Although Jevons has been referred to as a pioneer in the use of index numbers, it is only in a few recent studies that he is examined exclusively as a statistician (Stigler 1982; Aldrich 1987).
