Uncertain about what the latest statistics are supposed to mean? Lorraine
Daston, director of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science,
illuminates the birth and growth of the mathematics by which we deal with
uncertainty in her book, Classical Probability in the Enlightenment (Princeton,
£16.50/$19.95, ISBN 0 691 00644 X). Using refreshing, jargon-free
language, she interprets the philosophy, economics and ethics of the age that
profoundly shaped the way we understand probability today.
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