With these pages I plan to make available a broad range of material related to the history of statistics. This will include principally a selection of original sources in English translation. The reader may rightly assume, unless another person should be credited, that I am responsible for any errors of mistranslation or transcription.

Every effort has been made to ensure that texts have been reproduced as accurately as possible. The translations have not been rendered into polished English because they are meant to reflect as best as I am capable the sense and language of the authors. However, I have endeavored to make the English readable.

Whenever possible, the original notation of the authors has been retained. However, I have at times relied on the collected works of an individual. It should be noted that editors of collected works have sometimes changed the notation from that which was used in the first publication. It has been necessary, but only rarely, to actually alter notation and this has occurred chiefly when the character used is not available.

These documents may be freely copied for use by educators and educational institutions as long as proper credit is given and they remain unaltered. This site may neither be mirrored nor these files reposted. Comments and corrections are welcome. 

My present plan is to completely redo this site as time permits. Consequently, only a minimal amount remains until such time.

email Richard J. Pulskamp

It is likely that these pages will be in a permanent state of construction.


Nikolaus I Bernoulli is the author of the dissertation De usu artis conjectandi in jure

Jean D'Alembert is often maligned for his errors in discussing probability. Here I have placed translations of all of his writings on probability. He also penned a number of memoirs of a statistical nature on the subject of inoculation for the smallpox. These remain to be done.

Leonhard Euler wrote a number of papers on probability and what we now call statistics. Here are found translations of the majority of his works. I have also endeavored to give a fairly complete collection of ancillary papers up to the time of Laplace. Several gaps are yet evident.