Euler on statistics (Q2324051)

A review of Euler's work in what would nowadays be called statistics is presented. The background of the growing interest in questions of probability in the 18th century certainly was the just established lotteries, but also the emerging insurance issues which asked for things like mortality tables to compute the expenses of insurance schemes for widows and orphans. Hence, the paper under consideration starts with an introduction and then discusses Euler's mathematical work on lotteries and games of chances, being very popular in Euler's lifetime. But Euler also worked on the theory of errors in observations, in the design of experiments, and in questions of mortality and life expectancy issues.