A history of inverse probability. From Thomas Bayes to Karl Pearson.
The author expanded the first edition of this book (1991; Zbl 0741.01011) by some 175 pages. Understandably, his main heroes are Bayes, Condorcet, Laplace and Poisson; he also pays much attention to Michell, Cournot, De Morgan, Boole, Edgeworth and Karl Pearson and quotes a host of commentators sometimes forgetting to state his own opinion. The author is fond of rare words; his ``prolocution'' and ``feracious'' are lacking in the Concise Oxford Dictionary (1973). He does not translate French or German passages and even a few sentences from Jakob Bernoulli's ``Meditationes'' are offered only in Latin. And the exact source of his numerous epigraphs remains a mystery. At best, he indicates the titles of the pertinent books, as ``Pickwick club'' from which I quote now: ``I would not be too hard upon him at first. I'd drop him in the water-butt and put the lid on\(\dots\)'' (Sam Weller, in Chapt. 28). The book is loosely written mainly because the connections between inverse probability, induction and statistics in general are not even hinted at. A history of the last-mentioned subject written by this well-read author would have been more useful. The Bibliography contains about 650 items, 36 of them published in 1991 or later. The collection works of Bernstein, Edgeworth and Huygens are not made use of; new editions of the books of Condorcet, Lacroix, Cournot and others are not mentioned and a few bibliographical mistakes are repeated.
scientific article; zbMATH DE number 1321181