Biometrika Centenary:: Sample surveys

Despite Karl Pearson's stated aim that the 'evolutionist has to become in the widest sense of the words a registrar-general for all forms of life', the papers published in Biometrika on sample surveys have been mainly theoretical and do not start to appear until the 1940s. There has been little work on sampling in the life sciences, with the exception of capture-recapture methods. The major areas have been in variable probability designs, the foundations of inference for finite populations, analytic surveys and the role of selection mechanisms in inference. In recent years the work on survey analysis has been the outcome of an interaction between sample selection mechanisms and mainstream theory, with interesting consequences for both areas.