London: Richard Taylor, 1851. First edition, journal issue in the original printed wrappers, of Boole’s first paper on probability. “Since about 1850, Boole had become increasingly interested in the mathematical theory of probability and more especially its philosophical aspects … In 1976, in his book Boole’s Logic and Probability, Theodore..... More
Item #2974

London: Royal Society, 1888. First edition, journal issue in original printed wrappers, of Galton’s invention of the statistical concept of correlation, one of the most “fundamental and ubiquitous” ideas in statistics (Stigler, p. 73). “Like all major scientific discoveries, correlation did not appear in a vacuum. It was a concluding..... More
Item #4698

Paris: Firmin Didot, 1806. First edition, second issue, but the first to contain the Supplement, of the invention of the method of least squares, “the automobile of modern statistical analysis” and the origin of “the most famous priority dispute in the history of statistics” (Stigler). “In 1805 Legendre published the..... More
Item #5112

London: Printed by W.P. and sold by F. Fayram; Benj. Motte; and W. Pearson, 1725. First edition of de Moivre’s influential study of annuities based upon the mortality statistics gathered by Edmund Halley in the 1690s. “De Moivre’s contribution to annuities lies not in his evaluation of the demographic facts..... More
Item #3291

Paris: J. Quilau, 1708. A fine copy, of the first separately published textbook of probability. “In 1708 [Montmort] published his work on Chances, where with the courage of Columbus he revealed a new world to mathematicians” (Todhunter, p. 78). “The Essay (1708) is the first published comprehensive text on probability..... More
Item #3894

[Colophon:] Venice: Paganinus de Paganinis, 10-20 November 1494. First edition, first issue (see below), very rare, this is a remarkable copy in entirely original condition and with a distinguished provenance, having been in the famous Giustiniani family from publication to the present day. The Summa is a work of enormous..... More
Item #4844

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1944. First edition, and a fine copy with the very rare dust jacket, of “the classic work upon which modern-day game theory is based. What began more than sixty years ago as a modest proposal that a mathematician and an economist write a short paper together..... More
Item #5195

[Washington, DC: National Defense Research Council], 1942. Extremely rare first edition of this classic work which laid the foundations of modern communication and control theory. “It has been the opinion of many that Wiener will be remembered for his Extrapolation long after Cybernetics is forgotten. Indeed few computer-science students would..... More
Item #5179