Destined to remain the classic treatment of the subject ... for many years to come ... Although an inspection of the table of contents reveals a coverage so extensive that the work of more than 600 pages might lead one at first to regard this book as an encyclopedia on the subject, a reading of any chapter of the text will impress the reader as a friendly lecture revealing an unusual appreciation of both rigor and the computing technique so important to the statistician. In a word, Jordan's work is a most readable and detailed record of lectures on the Calculus of Finite Differences which will certainly appeal tremendously to the statistician and which could have been written only by one possessing a deep appreciation of mathematical statistics.