Bienaymé, Cournot and the extinction of family names (1845–1847)

Nicolas Bacaër ()
Additional contact information
Nicolas Bacaër: IRD (Institut de Recherche pour le Développement)

Chapter Chapter 7 in A Short History of Mathematical Population Dynamics, 2011, pp 41-44 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract The French statistician Bienaymé understood in 1845 how to compute the probability of a family name becoming extinct if each male has a number of sons following a given probability distribution. If the average number of sons is less than or equal to one, the family name will become extinct. It the average is bigger than one, the extinction probability is strictly less than one. The proof of his result was published two years later in a book written by his friend Cournot. These works were rediscovered only recently.

Keywords: Vote System; Male Offspring; Extinction Probability; Family Line; General Inspector (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-0-85729-115-8_7

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9780857291158

DOI: 10.1007/978-0-85729-115-8_7

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().