This book describes the development of statistics, which for more than a century was called "the calculus of observations." The approach will help readers gain a clearer understanding of the historical development as well as the essential nature of some of the commonly used statistical estimation procedures. Detailed descriptions of the fitting of linear relationships by the method of least squares and the closely related least absolute deviations and minimax absolute deviations procedures are presented, along with some of the important work by Laplace, Gauss, and Adrain.

Inhalt

1 Introduction.- 2 The Methods of Boscovich and Mayer.- 3 Laplace's Work on the Methods of Boscovich and Mayer.- 4 Laplace's Minimax Procedure.- 5 The Method of Least Squares.- 6 Statistical Foundations of the Method of Least Squares.- 7 Adrain's Work on the Normal Law.- 8 Gauss's Most Probable Values.- 9 Laplace's Most Advantageous Method.- 10 Gauss's Most Plausible Values.- 11 Gauss's Method of Adjustment By Correlates.- 12 Mechanical Analogies for the Method of Least Squares.- 13 Orthogonalisation Procedures.- 14 Thiele's Derivation of the Method of Least Squares.- 15 Later Work on the Method of Situation.- 16 Concluding Remarks.- Name Index.