Soft Questions, Hard Answers: Jacob Bernoulli's Probability in Historical Context

Stephen Stigler

International Statistical Review, 2014, vol. 82, issue 1, 1-16

Abstract: type="main" xml:id="insr12049-abs-0001"> On the 300th anniversary of the publication of Jacob Bernoulli's Ars Conjectandi, the book is revisited in historical context and seen in a new light. Bernoulli's announced goal of extending the application of probability from games to civil life was frustrated by the a priori difficulty of specifying equally likely cases. The great approximation theorem Bernoulli proved and suggested could lead to empirical applications was impractical for all but unrealistically large sample sizes, but it was immensely influential in the development of the mathematics of probability.

Date: 2014
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