Front cover image for Annotated readings in the history of statistics

Annotated readings in the history of statistics

Interest in the his tory of statistics has grown substantially in recent years and the subject is now covered by a number of excellent books. S. M. Stigler's The History of Statistics (19S6) gives an overview up to 1900 while Anders Hald's two encyclopedic volumes A History of Probability and Statistics before 1750 and A History of Mathematical Statistics f'T'Om 1750 to 1930, published in 1990 and 1995, provide detailed mathematical discussion of the major contributions up to 1930. Hald's books have re­ moved Isaac Todhunter's A History of Probability from the pedestal which it occupied for a century and a quarter and rendered Karl Pearson's Lec­ ture Notes of mainly historical interest themselves. Journal papers have appeared on specific topics, especially in the series "Studies in the History of Probability and Statistics" in Biometrika and in the long sequence of papers in Archive for the History of the Exact Sciences by O. Sheynin. The two volumes of reprinted papers, mostly from Biometrika, issued in 1970 and 1977 have proved particularly valuable. More recently, many important papers published since 1900 have been reprinted with commentaries in the three-volume Breakth'T'Oughs in Statistics (1992-1997). Stigler's Statistics on the Table (1999) provides illuminating vignettes. In addition, specialized books have appeared on particular topics, such as A. I. Dale's A History of Inverse P'T'Obability (1991, 1999) and R. W. Fare­ brother's Fitting Linear Relationships (199S). The pioneering book on the early period, F. N
Print Book, English, 2001
Springer, New York, 2001
History
xiv, 252 pages ; 24 cm.
9780387988443, 0387988440
904554552
The Introduction of the Concept of Expectation: Comments on Pascal (1654)
The First Formal Test of Significance: Comments on Arbuthnott (1710)
Coincidences and the Method of Inclusion and Exclusion: Comments of Montmort (1713), N. Bernoulli (1713), and de Moivre (1718)
On the Game of Thirteen / P. R. de Montmort
Letter from Nicholas Bernoulli to Montmort on the Game of Thirteen, reproduced in Montmort (1713, p. 301)
The Doctrine of Chances, Problem XXV / A. de Moivre
The Determination of the Accuracy of Observations: Comments on Gauss (1816)
The Determination of the Accuracy of Observations / C. F. Gauss
The Introduction of Asymptotic Relative Efficiency: Comments on Laplace (1818)
On the Probability of Results Deduced by Methods of any Kind from a Large Number of Observations / P. S. Laplace
The Logistic Growth Curve: Comments on Verhulst (1845)
Mathematical Investigations on the Law of Population Growth / P.-F. Verhulst
Goodness-of-Fit Statistics: The Distributions in Normal Samples of (a) the Sum of Squares About the Population Mean, (b) the Circular Sum of Squares of Successive Differences, and (c) the Circular Serial Correlation Coefficient: Comments on Abbe (1863)
On the Conformity-to-a-Law of the Distribution of Errors in a Series of Observations / E. Abbe
The Distribution of the Sample Variance Under Normality: Comments on Helmert (1876b)
The Calculation of the Probable Error from the Squares of the Adjusted Direct Observations of Equal Precision and Fechner's Formula / F. R. Helmert
The Random Walk and Its Fractal Limiting Form: Comments on Venn (1888)
Estimating a Binomial Parameter Using the Likelihood Function: Comments on Thiele (1889)
Yule's Paradox (Simpson's Paradox): Comments on Yule (1903)
Beginnings of Extreme-Value Theory: Comments on Bortkiewicz (1922a) and von Mises (1923)
Range and Standard Deviation / L. von Bortkiewicz
On the Range of a Series of Observations / R. von Mises
The Evaluation of Tournament Outcomes: Comments on Zermelo (1929)
The Evaluation of Tournament Results as a Maximization Problem in Probability Theory / E. Zermelo
The Origin of Confidence Limits: Comments on Fisher (1930)
App. A. English Translations of Papers and Book Extracts of Historical Interest
App. B. First (?) Occurrence of Common Terms in Statistics and Probability