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Historical background: Hugo Steinhaus can be considered as an early father of data science. He authored the paper Sur la division des corps matériels en parties, Bulletin de l’Académie Polonaise des Sciences, 1956. The title could read "On the division of material bodies into parts" in English. As the original paper is hard to obtain, the above link is a retranscription from latex that I made in the summer.

It is considered as one of the first known origins of the $K$-means algorithms (see Data Clustering: 50 Years Beyond K-Means, Anil K. Jain, Pattern recognition letters, 2010 or Origins and extensions of the k-means algorithm in cluster analysis, Hans-Hermann Bock, Electronic Journ@l for History of Probability and Statistics, 2008).

According to his wikipedia page, H. Steinhaus has collaborated with engineers, geologists, economists, physicians, biologists (and even lawyers), and lacking of trustworthy information during World War II, he invented a statistical tool to estimate 'German' losses, using necrologic news from German soldiers on the front. He notably used the mention that the soldier killed was the first, second or third child from a family.

I am looking for references (possibly second-hand notes, translated papers) to this applied and "missing value" statistical tool related works? Namely:

  1. Regarding his war lacunary inferences, where is this algorithm described (as I would like to be able to re-implement it)?
  2. What are specific examples of his applied works with biologists for instance, were they published, and where?
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  • $\begingroup$ I'm not quite sure I understand what do you mean by "precise references". Would you care to explain that please! Your question raises my interests. $\endgroup$
    – eliasah
    Oct 24, 2015 at 21:41
  • $\begingroup$ This qustion should probably be moved to hsm.stackexchange.com $\endgroup$
    – aventurin
    Aug 27, 2016 at 11:33
  • $\begingroup$ @aventurin I was actually saying this to myself. I posted this way before I discovered history of science and mathematics. Should I flag it myself? $\endgroup$ Aug 27, 2016 at 11:41
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    $\begingroup$ @Laurent Duval I do not know how to move it over to HSM. Feel free to do it. Your question sounds very interesting to me. Hope you'll get an answer there. $\endgroup$
    – aventurin
    Aug 27, 2016 at 13:33

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