Originally published in 1930, this book was formed from the content of three lectures delivered at London University during March of that year. The text provides a concise discussion of the relationship between theoretical statistics and actuarial science. This book will be of value to anyone with an interest in the actuarial profession, statistics and the history of finance.

This monograph presents a survey of mathematical models useful in solving reliability problems. It includes a detailed discussion of life distributions corresponding to wearout and their use in determining maintenance policies, and covers important topics such as the theory of increasing (decreasing) failure rate distributions, optimum maintenance policies, and the theory of coherent systems. The emphasis throughout the book is on making minimal assumptions--and only those based on plausible physical considerations--so that the resulting mathematical deductions may be safely made about a large variety of commonly occurring reliability situations. The first part of the book is concerned with component reliability, while the second part covers system reliability, including problems that are as important today as they were in the 1960s. Mathematical reliability refers to a body of ideas, mathematical models, and methods directed toward the solution of problems in predicting, estimating, or optimizing the probability of survival, mean life, or, more generally, life distribution of components and systems. The enduring relevance of the subject of reliability and the continuing demand for a graduate-level book on this topic are the driving forces behind its republication. Unavailable since its original publication in 1965, Mathematical Theory of Reliability now joins a growing list of volumes in SIAM's Classics series. Although contemporary reliability books are now available, few provide as mathematically rigorous a treatment of the required probability background as this one.

An introduction to the Bayesian approach to statistical inference that demonstrates its superiority to orthodox frequentist statistical analysis. This book offers an introduction to the Bayesian approach to statistical inference, with a focus on nonparametric and distribution-free methods. It covers not only well-developed methods for doing Bayesian statistics but also novel tools that enable Bayesian statistical analyses for cases that previously did not have a full Bayesian solution. The book's premise is that there are fundamental problems with orthodox frequentist statistical analyses that distort the scientific process. Side-by-side comparisons of Bayesian and frequentist methods illustrate the mismatch between the needs of experimental scientists in making inferences from data and the properties of the standard tools of classical statistics.

Reprinted here is the 1953 fourth edition of this textbook, containing a preface by the author.

Thorvald Nicolai Thiele was a brilliant Danish researcher of the 19th Century. He was a professor of Astronomy at the University of Copenhagen and the founder of Hafnia, the first Danish private insurance company. Thiele worked in astronomy, mathematics, actuarial science, and statistics, his most spectacular contributions were in the latter two areas, where his published work was far ahead of his time. This book, written for researchers and graduate students of statistical, science and mathematics history, is concerned with his statistical work. It evolves around his three main statistical masterpieces, which are now translated into English for the first time: 1) His article from 1880 where he derives the Kalman filter; 2) His book from 1889, where he lays out the subject of statistics in a highly original way, derives the half-invariants (today known as cumulants), the notion of likelihood in the case of binomial experiments, the canonical form of the linear normal model, and develops model criticism via analysis of residuals. 3) An article from 1899 where he completes the theory of the half-invariants. Thiele - Pioneer in Statistics also contains three papers, written by A. Hald and S.L. Lauritzen which describes Thiele's statistical work in modern terms and puts them into an historical perspective. The texts are supplemented with introductory material on Thiele's life and other interests, as well as with explanatory comments from the translator in the form of footnotes.