Yet Another Solution to Galton’s Problem

For half a century, Galton’s problem has been a thorn in the side of cultural anthropologists, agitating them to print. Galton’s problem motivated the creators of all the major cross-cultural sampling frames to advocate selection of a single ethnographic description from each of up to hundreds of internally homogeneous culture areas. Why this happened is perplexing. Galton’s problem disappears when it is thought of as a theoretical issue of correct specification of a theoretical model. There are implications for the construction of new cross-cultural samples.