Applied Bayesian and classical inference. The case of the Federalist papers. 2nd ed. of: Inference and disputed authorship: The Federalist (Q1062412)

The new version of the book (for a review of the 1964 first edition see Zbl 0122.141) has two additions. The first is the replacement of the table of contents by an analytical table of contents. Following the title of each section or subsection is a description of the contents of the section. Secondly, the authors have prepared an extra chapter dealing with authorship work published from about 1969 to 1983. The work of the authors on the authorship of Federalist papers (A. Hamilton or J. Madison) has an important role to play in the field of applied statistics. This covers the first 9 chapters of the book. It is a unique study of its kind and findings of the authors have come to stay. The last chapter of the book (which is an addition to this edition) gives a general idea of the state of the field, of its strengths and weaknesses, and of where some challenging problems and useful work on authorship might lie. In the Indian context it lists only one paper concerning the authorship of papers published in the Indian newspaper ''Kesari''. Many statistical studies have been made on ancient Indian literature. One important study is given in the book of \textit{T. R. Trautman}: Kautilya and the Arthasāstra, E. J. Brill, Leiden, Netherlands (1971). The reviewer also gave extensive lectures on 'Studies in stylometry (A review)' at the Institute of Social Sciences, Agra University, Agra (India), in November 1981 where some work has been done in this field. The reviewer would also like to mention the book 'Statistique et analyse linguistique'. Presses Universitaires de France, Paris (1966), which gives texts of 13 research papers presented at the seminar at Strasbourg in April 1964. The reviewer is sure that this edition will be welcomed by applied statisticians.