"This book provides a selection of pioneering papers or extracts ranging from Pascal (1654) to R. A. Fisher (1930). The authors' annotations put the articles in perspective for the modern reader. A special feature of the book is the large number of translations, nearly all made by the authors. The selected articles vary considerably in difficulty, some requiring only a basic understanding of statistical concepts, whereas others surprise by their early sophistication in "classical" statistics."--BOOK JACKET.