James Stirling’s Methodus Differentialis

James Stirling's "Methodus Differentialis" is one of the early classics of numerical analysis. It contains not only the results and ideas for which Stirling is chiefly remembered, for example, Stirling numbers and Stirling's asymptotic formula for factorials, but also a wealth of material on transformations of series and limiting processes. An impressive collection of examples illustrates the efficacy of Stirling's methods by means of numerical calculations, and some germs of later ideas, notabl