De Moivre’s discovery of standard deviation

De Moivre’s discovery of standard deviation Background Although the term standard deviation as a measure of dispersion is widely associated with the British statistician Karl Pearson (1857- 1936) who coined the term in 1894, this powerful parameter had actually been discovered and put to use well over a century before when it appeared in the 2nd edition of a book entitled The Doctrine of Chances, by French-born mathematician Abraham de Moivre (1667 – 1754) who had fled to England to escape...