A Renaissance gambling dispute spawned probability theory

(scientificamerican.com)

46 points | by sohkamyung 2 days ago

4 comments

  • benbreen 1 minute ago
    Just wanted to flag that the works of Ian Hacking, especially The Emergence of Probability (1975) and The Taming of Chance (1990) are excellent on this. Dense and challenging at times but also well written and the product of a very original mind.

    The latter book has a Wikipedia page with some more info - was surprised to see Hacking not mentioned here since the featured article is partly based on his work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Taming_of_Chance

  • skywal_l 2 hours ago
    > a French gambler and intellectual socialite enlisted the help

    Imagine Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat teaming together to solve your problem.

  • The_Blade 37 minutes ago
    Luca Pacioli invented (or really, put down on paper) double-entry accounting

    it is funny how probability has always been way behind other maths. i got to use the Birthday problem at work, once, which made the math undergrad totally worth it

    fortunately my Polymarket and Kalshi wagers are protected by AES et al