The Analyst
Adrien-Marie Legendre (1805) developed the method of least squares, and introduced it in his "Nouvelles méthodes pour la détermination des orbites des comètes" ("New Methods for Determining the Orbits of Comets"). In ignorance of Legendre's contribution, an Irish-American writer, Robert Adrain, editor of "The Analyst" (1808), first deduced the law of facility of error,