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Blaise Pascal [a] (19 June 1623 – 19 August 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher, and Catholic writer. Pascal was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax collector in Rouen .
The problem of points, also called the problem of division of the stakes, is a classical problem in probability theory.One of the famous problems that motivated the beginnings of modern probability theory in the 17th century, it led Blaise Pascal to the first explicit reasoning about what today is known as an expected value.
Through their correspondence in 1654, Fermat and Blaise Pascal helped lay the foundation for the theory of probability. From this brief but productive collaboration on the problem of points, they are now regarded as joint founders of probability theory. [17] Fermat is credited with carrying out the first-ever rigorous probability calculation.
The mathematical methods of probability arose in the investigations first of Gerolamo Cardano in the 1560s (not published until 100 years later), and then in the correspondence Pierre de Fermat and Blaise Pascal (1654) on such questions as the fair division of the stake in an interrupted game of chance.
The date which historians cite as the beginning of the development of modern probability theory is 1654, when two of the most well-known mathematicians of the time, Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat, began a correspondence discussing the subject.
Pierre de Fermat Blaise Pascal Christiaan Huygens [182] (founders) Fermat and Pascal co-founded probability theory, about which Huygens wrote the first book Projective geometry: Girard Desargues [183] (founder) By generalizing the use of vanishing points to include the case when these are infinitely far away Set theory: Georg Cantor: Statistics ...
The earliest known mention of the gambler's ruin problem is a letter from Blaise Pascal to Pierre Fermat in 1656 (two years after the more famous correspondence on the problem of points). [2] Pascal's version was summarized in a 1656 letter from Pierre de Carcavi to Huygens:
The mathematical foundations for the subject heavily drew on the new probability theory, pioneered in the 16th century by Gerolamo Cardano, Pierre de Fermat and Blaise Pascal. Christiaan Huygens (1657) gave the earliest known scientific treatment of the subject.