Reviews for History of Statistics The Measurement of Uncertainty Before 1900

The average rating for History of Statistics The Measurement of Uncertainty Before 1900 based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-07-05 00:00:00 William Birnie In two words: very good. This is a remarkable piece of work. I have rarely read books such as this in which the amount of information that has been read, processed, analysed and then synthesised by the author is so massive and spanning several centuries. This is really very impressive to someone like me who appreciates first hand the difficulties involved, the motivation needed, and the shear amount of energy that must be invested in reading large amounts of highly technical, and, as applicable to this case, very old in style of presentation and notation, in order to first understand and then extract its essence as well as its relevance to the evolution of a field as a whole. It has taken me more than two years to finish because it is very long, because my (but I could write in general 'our') interest in a particular subject naturally waxes and wanes depending on we are doing and concerned with from day to day and month to month, because some sections are very technical, and because some of them were more interesting to me than others. In addition, although the text is very well written and I have not picked up any misprints (which is amazing compared to most books I have read), the typesetting and layout is not conducive to reading for long periods of time: the font is too small, the layout is too tight, there are not enough chapters, sections nor subsections. Lastly, I found that it ended very abruptly, as if the author "needed" to finish the book and just ended it without taking the time to write a fuller conclusion that would have allowed the reader to get a global summary of the contents of the book in somewhat greater detail than what was done in a few pages of text. But then again, maybe this was intended by the author. I just know that I would have greatly appreciated a detailed conclusion reviewing the book in 10 to 20 pages, say, in order to clearly tie in all the elements of the book. Even in the light of these minor reservations, I whole heartedly encourage anyone interested in statistics to read this book. It is very well worth the investment, and I found it, indeed, very inspiring.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-11-30 00:00:00 Mark Flavin An absolutely incredible book. Have written summaries of each chapter on laptop, will translate and fill in later.