A History of Probability and Statistics and Their Applications Before 1750

Anders Hald was formerly a Professor of Statistics at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.

Evoking the life and works of the great natural philosophers who contributed to the development of probability theory and statistics, this bestsellernow available in paperback--also describes the contemporaneous development and interaction of probability theory (and games of chance), statistics (particularly in astronomy and demography), and life insurance mathematics. To read and enjoy this intellectual history, you need know but little statistics or mathematics.

1. The Book and Its Relation to Other Works. 2. A Sketch of the Background in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. 3. Early Concepts of Probability and Chance. 4. Cardano and Liber de Ludo Aleae, c. 1565. 5. The Foundation of Probability Theory by Pascal and Fermat in 1654. 6. Huygens and De Ratiociniis in Ludo Aleae, 1657. 7. John Graunt and the Observations Made upon the Bills of Mortality, 1662. 8. The Probabilistic Interpretation of Graunt's Life Table. 9. The Early History of Life Insurance Mathematics. 10. Mathematical Models and Statistical Methods in Astronomy from Hipparchus to Kepler and Galileo. 11. The Newtonian Revolution in Mathematics and Science. 12. Miscellaneous Contributions Between 1657 and 1708. 13. The Great Leap Forward, 1708 - 1718: A Survey. 14. New Solutions to Old Problems, 1708 - 1718. 15. James Bernoulli and Ars Conjectandi, 1713. 16. Bernoulli's Theorem. 17. Tests of Significance Based on the Sex Ratio at Birth and the Binomial Distribution, 1712 - 1713. 18. Montmort and the Essay d'Analyse sur les Jeux de Hazard, 1708 and 1713. 19. The Problem of Coincidences and the Compound Probability Theorem. 20. The Problems of the Duration of Play, 1708-1718. 21. Nicholas Bernoulli. 22. De Moivre and the Doctrine of Chances, 1718, 1738, and 1756. 23. The Problem of the Duration of Play and the Method of Difference Equations. 24. De Moivre's Normal Approximation to the Binomial Distribution, 1733. 25. The Insurance Mathematics of de Moivre and Simpson, 1725-1756. References. Index.