The table above gives James Short's measurements of the parallax of the sun (in seconds of a degree), based on the 1761 transit of Venus. The data were originally published in [Short]. The table and descriptive information here are adapted from [Stigler]. The number of cases is 53 and the "true" value is 8.798. The parallax of the sun is the angle subtended by the earth, as seen from the surface of the sun.
An Account of the Transit of Venus over the Sun, on Saturday Morning, 6th June 1761, at Savile-House, about 8" of Time West of St. Paul's, London., Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 52 (1761), 178-182.
Do robust estimators work with real data, Annals of Statistics 5 (1977), 1055-1098.
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