In what way did Étienne Halphen interests lead to him discovering the harmonic distribution?

Context: In probability theory and statistics, the harmonic distribution is a continuous probability distribution. It was discovered by Étienne Halphen, who had become interested in the statistical modeling of natural events. His practical experience in data analysis motivated him to pioneer a new system of distributions that provided sufficient flexibility to fit a large variety of data sets. Halphen restricted his search to distributions whose parameters could be estimated using simple statistical approaches.

Answer: He had become interested in the statistical modeling of natural events.  This motivated him to find a system that provided sufficient flexibility to fit a large variety of data sets.