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Estimating F-Statistics: A Historical View

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Bruce S. Weir
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Abstract

Characterizing the genetic structure of populations is of importance to evolutionary biology, to human disease gene mapping, and to forensic science. Sewall Wright introduced a set of F-statistics to describe population structure in 1951, and he emphasized that these quantities were ratios of variances. Responding to uncertainty over the best way to estimate F-statistics, Weir and Cockerham published a method-of-moments set of estimators in 1984. This paper continues to be widely cited, with over 7,000 citations to date. Some background to the publishing history of the Weir and Cockerham paper is given here, along with subsequent developments and a discussion of current uses of Wright's F-statistics.

Type
Biology
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 79 , Issue 5 , December 2012 , pp. 637 - 643
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

This work was supported in part by National Institutes of Health grant GM 075091. John Doebley suggested the 1984 paper of Weir and Cockerham: that paper rested on previous work by the late C. Clark Cockerham. Joe Felsentein was the corresponding editor for the 1984 paper. Bill Hill and the late Alan Robertson provided helpful discussions for the 1984 paper.

References

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