A. de Moivre: 'De Mensura Sortis' or 'On the Measurement of Chance'.: [Offprinted from:] International Statistical Review, 52, 3, pp. 229-62.

[London: , 1984]. The author's own copy of his article on de Moivre's De Mensura Sortis, an important early contribution to probability theory, the original offprint specially bound together with a xerox of the original 1712 work, and with Hald's ownership signature to the front free endpaper. De Mensura Sortis, published in Latin in Philosophical Transactions, gave an overview of main concepts such as probability, conditional probability, expectation, dependent and independent events, the multiplication rule, and the binomial distribution. The treatise was dedicated to Sir Isaac Newton, whose priority in the dispute between Newton and Leibniz over the development of infinitesimal calculus de Moivre had defended. Nearly all the work was later incorporated into de Moivre's book The Doctrine of Chances (1718, 1738, 1756), which was the most important textbook on probability theory until the publication of Laplace's Théorie Analytqiue des Probabilités (1812). The Danish statistician Anders Hald (1913-2007) served as professor at the University of Copenhagen from 1960 to 1982. His article in the International Statistical Review gives an overview of de Moivre's work, and is followed by an English translation by Bruce McClintock. Original offprint bound together in 1 volume with xerox copy of de Moivre's 1712 publication (see note), small quarto (246 x 173 mm). Contemporary green half leatherette and marbled sides. In fine condition.