Recently I was privileged to sit on the committee that selects the winner of the Karl Pearson Prize. KP was, of course, an early mathematical statistician, famous for many commonly-used statistical methods and tools including histograms, the correlation coefficient, the method of moments, p-values, the chi-squared test and principal components analysis. He is also infamous for his highly racist views, support for eugenics, anti-semitism and for refusing a knighthood. All that aside, the job of the committee was to select an English-language article or book published in the last 30 years that …