Customer Reviews

The History of Statistics: The Measurement of Uncertainty before 1900

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This book is THE definitive work on the early development of statistics. Obviously written by a man in love with his subject. Bernoulli, de Moivre, Bayes, Laplace, Gauss, Quetelet, Lexis, Galton, Edgeworth and Pearson all but come alive. I particularly enjoyed the reproductions of first sources included that you would otherwise have to travel to Paris to see.

Stigler is unrivaled as a statistician who researches the history of statistics. This covers the famous mathematicians and statisticians who developed the foundation on which probability and statistics blossomed in the 20th Century. He is thorough and accurate and his writing is always clear and interesting. After reading this try Salsburg's "Lady Tasting Tea" to see how Fisher, Cramer, Neyman and Pearson and Kolmogorov and others formally developed probabilty and mathematical statistics as important disciplines in the 20th Century.

Always enjoyable and enlightening, Stigler brings an unparalleled degree of scholarship to the essays.

Professor Stigler is an academic, and writes like one. He is obviously knowledgeable; this book will appeal to professional statisticians.

For intelligent laymen with a general interest in the history of statistics, Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk by Peter Bernstein and The Lady Tasting Tea: How Statistics Revolutionized Science in the Twentieth Century by David Salsburg will be equally informative and far more enjoyable. Both authors are as knowledgeable as Professor Stigler, but write more clearly.

I love history of mathematics books like this one that have the guts to delve into the actual mathematics involved while retaining a narrative thread. I use it with my children to illustrate why mathematics is important. What problems were people trying to solve? How solutions were arrived at in steps over time rather than as deus ex machina. This is much more effective than presenting mathematics as most schools, out of context as a series of recipes. The book is divided into three main parts:

The Development of Mathematical Statistics in Astronomy and Geodesy before 1827

The Struggle to Extend a Calculus of Probabilities to the Social Sciences

A Breakthorugh in Studies of Heredity

This is an outstanding book. As a Statistics student, I can't imagine reading anything better on this subject. The math in the book is in-depth enough such that I can relate historical developments of various statistical theory and technique to what I have done (and, for that matter, that which I have yet to do) and it was possible to reproduce some of the calculations on my own (which was quite enjoyable). Overall, this is an excellent book--I can't recommend it enough.

Excellent book. To me, this book is not simply an exposition of the history of statistics, but a way to understand statistics better via the challenges which historically motivated its development. The writing is clear, precise, and insightful.