Fitting linear relationships
a history of the calculus of observations 1750-1900
This book describes the development between 1750 and 1900 of what we would now regard as a class of statistical fitting procedures. In their early stages, these procedures had very little statistical content, and we therefore refer to the subject area by its historical name of the calculus of observations. The book contains detailed algebraic 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. These traditional fitting procedures are of course addressed in conventional statistical textbooks, but in such books the discussion of their historical background is usually extremely slight if not entirely absent. The primary audience for this book will be statisticians concerned with the fitting of linear models. However, it will also be of interest to engineers and scientists concerned with the empirical determination of linear relationships.
Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.
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What the reading experience may hold
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Nonfiction
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Balanced tone · Measured pace
A comfortable full-length choice for steady daily reading.
A good fit if…
Readers who want a thoughtful experience and enjoy noticing the connections beneath a book’s surface story.
This book's DNA
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Spoiler-Free Emotional Arc
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A quick reading snapshot
Edition facts and catalog signals to help you decide whether this book fits what you want to read next.
- ISBN-13
- 978-0-3879-8598-5
- Language
- English
- Edition record
- OL372776M
A more thoughtful way into this book
This guide uses the edition details and category signals above to help you choose deliberately. It does not replace the author's work or a full review.
A comfortable full-length choice for steady daily reading.
Begin with its place in Nonfiction, then notice where the book resists that label.
Read for connection, not completion.
Mark one passage that sharpens the book's central concern and one that complicates it. That tension often reveals more than a quick summary.
Three questions to carry with you
- Whose perspective organizes the story, and whose perspective remains outside it?
- Which sources or lived experiences carry the author’s central argument?
- How does the book change the way you understand its larger subject?
Editorial framework by Wesley Bryan, BookenDeX Founder and Editor.
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