Abraham de Moivre - Doctrine of Chance - 1718

''The Doctrine of Chances'' was the first textbook on

probability theory Probability theory is the branch of mathematics concerned with probability. Although there are several different probability interpretations, probability theory treats the concept in a rigorous mathematical manner by expressing it through a set ...

, written by 18th-century French

mathematician A mathematician is someone who uses an extensive knowledge of mathematics in their work, typically to solve mathematical problems. Mathematicians are concerned with numbers, data, quantity, structure, space, models, and change. History On ...

Abraham de Moivre Abraham de Moivre FRS (; 26 May 166727 November 1754) was a French mathematician known for de Moivre's formula, a formula that links complex numbers and trigonometry, and for his work on the normal distribution and probability theory. He moved ...

and first published in 1718.. De Moivre wrote in English because he resided in England at the time, having fled France to escape the persecution of

Huguenots The Huguenots ( , also , ) were a religious group of French Protestants who held to the Reformed, or Calvinist, tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, the Genevan burgomaster Be ...

. The book's title came to be synonymous with ''probability theory'', and accordingly the phrase was used in

Thomas Bayes Thomas Bayes ( ; 1701 7 April 1761) was an English statistician, philosopher and Presbyterian minister who is known for formulating a specific case of the theorem that bears his name: Bayes' theorem. Bayes never published what would become his ...

' famous posthumous paper ''

An Essay towards solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances ''An Essay towards solving a Problem in the Doctrine of Chances'' is a work on the mathematical theory of probability by Thomas Bayes, published in 1763, two years after its author's death, and containing multiple amendments and additions due to h ...

'', wherein a version of Bayes' theorem was first introduced.

Editions

The full title of the first edition was ''The doctrine of chances: or, a method for calculating the probabilities of events in play''; it was published in 1718, by W. Pearson, and ran for 175 pages. Published in 1738 by Woodfall and running for 258 pages, the second edition of de Moivre's book introduced the concept of

normal distribution In statistics, a normal distribution or Gaussian distribution is a type of continuous probability distribution for a real-valued random variable. The general form of its probability density function is : f(x) = \frac e^ The parameter \mu ...

s as approximations to binomial distributions. In effect de Moivre proved a special case of the

central limit theorem In probability theory, the central limit theorem (CLT) establishes that, in many situations, when independent random variables are summed up, their properly normalized sum tends toward a normal distribution even if the original variables themsel ...

. Sometimes his result is called the theorem of de Moivre–Laplace. A third edition was published posthumously in 1756 by A. Millar, and ran for 348 pages; additional material in this edition included an application of probability theory to actuarial science in the calculation of

annuities In investment, an annuity is a series of payments made at equal intervals.Kellison, Stephen G. (1970). ''The Theory of Interest''. Homewood, Illinois: Richard D. Irwin, Inc. p. 45 Examples of annuities are regular deposits to a savings account, m ...

References

External links

The third edition of The Doctrine of Chances.Full text of “The Doctrine of Chances”, 1st edition; from books.google.com
at MathPages {{Authority control Doctrine of Chances, The Doctrine of Chances, The Doctrine of Chances (2nd edition), The Doctrine of Chances (3rd edition), The Doctrine of Chances, The 1718 in science

Editions

References

Further reading

External links