This book offers a detailed history of parametric statistical inference. Covering the period between James Bernoulli and R.A. Fisher, it examines: binomial statistical inference; statistical inference by inverse probability; the central limit theorem and linear minimum variance estimation by Laplace and Gauss; error theory, skew distributions, correlation, sampling distributions; and the Fisherian Revolution. Lively biographical sketches of many of the main characters are featured throughout, including Laplace, Gauss, Edgeworth, Fisher, and Karl Pearson. Also examined are the roles played by DeMoivre, James Bernoulli, and Lagrange.

"Part I reprints and reworks Huygens's On Reckoning in Games of Chance. Part II offers a thorough treatment of the mathematics of combinations and permutations, including the numbers since known as "Bernoulli numbers." In Part III, Bernoulli solves more complicated problems of games of chance using that mathematics. In the final part, Bernoulli's crowning achievement in mathematical probability becomes manifest he applies the mathematics of games of chance to the problems of epistemic probability in civil, moral, and economic matters, proving what we now know as the weak law of large numbers."

"An impressive culmination of meticulous research into original sources, this definitive study constitutes the first full-length history of the Arithmetic Triangle." — Mathematics of Computation Pascal's Arithmetical Triangle was named for the seventeenth-century French philosopher/mathematician Blaise Pascal, though he did not invent it. A never-ending equilateral triangle of numbers that follow the rule of adding the two numbers above to get the number below, it appears much earlier in the literature of Hindu and Arabic mathematics and continues to fascinate Western mathematicians. Two sides are comprised of "all 1s," and because the triangle is infinite, there is no "bottom side." This book by A. W. F. Edwards, Professor of Biometry at the University of Cambridge, explores Pascal's Arithmetical Triangle and the way it has been studied, enjoyed, and used by mathematicians throughout history. "A fascinating book...giving new insights into the early history of probability theory and combinatorics and incidentally providing much stimulating material for teachers of mathematics." — G. A. Bernard, International Statistical Institute Review "Scrupulously researched . . . carries the reader along in a rewarding manner. It is a scientific who-dun-it and one must admire the author for the scholarly yet unpedantic manner in which he disperses some of the mists of antiquity." — A. W. Kemp, Biometrics "Recommended not only to historians and mathematicians, but also to students seeking to put some life into the dry treatment of these topics to which they have doubtless been subjected." — Ivor Grattan-Guinness, Annals of Science

WILEY-INTERSCIENCE PAPERBACK SERIES The Wiley-Interscience Paperback Series consists of selected books that have been made more accessible to consumers in an effort to increase global appeal and general circulation. With these new unabridged softcover volumes, Wiley hopes to extend the lives of these works by making them available to future generations of statisticians, mathematicians, and scientists. From the Reviews of History of Probability and Statistics and Their Applications before 1750 "This is a marvelous book . . . Anyone with the slightest interest in the history of statistics, or in understanding how modern ideas have developed, will find this an invaluable resource." –Short Book Reviews of ISI

"This work documents the history of techniques that statisticians use to manipulate economic, meteorological, biological, and physical data taken from observations recorded over time. The decomposition tools include index numbers, moving averages, relative time frameworks, and the use of differences (i.e., subtracting one observation from the previous value in the series). This history is accessible to students with a basic knowledge of statistics, as well as financial analysts, statisticians, and historians of economic thought and science."--BOOK JACKET.

This volume provides a necessary, current and extensive analysis of probabilistic thinking from a number of mathematicians, mathematics educators, and psychologists. The work of 58 contributing authors, investigating probabilistic thinking across the globe, is encapsulated in 6 prefaces, 29 chapters and 6 commentaries. Ultimately, the four main perspectives presented in this volume (Mathematics and Philosophy, Psychology, Stochastics and Mathematics Education) are designed to represent probabilistic thinking in a greater context.