English Translation of Roger Cotes's Logometria with Commentary
Three years ago (almost exactly) I wrote an answer on History of Science and Mathematics StackExchange trying to explain how Roger Cotes came up with the logarithm form of the Euler's formula. It was quite challenging to work through this problem, and it stuck with me for some time afterwards. A few months ago I was let go from my job, and suddenly found myself with enough free time to revisit this problem. The result was a new translation and commentary on the Logometria of Roger Cotes. While there already exists a published translation by Ronald Gowing (Gowing, Roger Cotes - Natural Philosopher , Cambridge University Press. 1983.), this book is unfortunately a bit difficult to get a hold of, and the commentary is less comprehensive in covering the background to Cotes's work. So drawing on several original sources, I've written what I believe is quite an accurate reflection of the background matter, as well as improved explanations of just what exactly Cotes was talking ...