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A Renaissance gambling dispute spawned probability theory

117 points by sohkamyung

by joenot443

5 subcomments

The article links to a series of letters between Fermat, Pascal, and Carcavi which are wonderfully intelligent and readable, while also deeply kind and personal.
> 1. I have been delighted to have had the thoughts conformed to those of M. Pascal, for I admire infinitely his genius and I believe him very capable of coming to the end of all that which he will undertake. The friendship that he offers me is so dear to me and so considerable that I must have no difficulty in making some use of it in the publishing of my Treatises.
> Our blows always continue and I am as glad as you in the admiration that our thoughts are arranged so exactly that it seems that they have taken one same route and make one same path
It makes me wonder if future generations will look back on correspondences between guys like Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie.
https://probabilityandfinance.com/pulskamp/Pascal/Sources/pa...

by skywal_l

0 subcomment

> a French gambler and intellectual socialite enlisted the help
Imagine Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat teaming together to solve your problem.

by benbreen

1 subcomments

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

by The_Blade

2 subcomments

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

by AdmiralAsshat

0 subcomment

Gambling is also (allegedly) responsible for giving us the sandwich[0] and the modern sushi roll.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Montagu,_4th_Earl_of_Sand...
There's a coffee-table book in there somewhere.

by quercusa

0 subcomment

Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk by Bernstein is an enjoyable read on this.

by divbzero

0 subcomment

… and a Student’s quest for quality beer led to the t-test.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Sealy_Gosset

0 subcomment

by ivansavz

0 subcomment

A nice video explainer about this dispute: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YRfSe-f1FE