Abstract
Trained to become a diplomat, a career which did not eventuate due to political circumstances, Christiaan Huygens turned to science and mathematics. While in Paris, he heard of Pascal’s and Fermat’s attempts to solve gaming problems. Back in Holland he conceived his calculus of expectations which considerably influenced the following generation of probabilists.
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Bibliography
Hald, Anders (1990). A History of Probability and Statistics and Their Applications Before 1750. John Wiley & Sons, New York, Chapter 6.
Schneider, Ivo (1980). The contributions of Christiaan Huygens to the development of a calculus of probabilities. Janus, 67, 269–279.
Schneider, Ivo (1996). Christiaan Huygens’ non-probabilistic approach to a calculus of games of chance. De Zeventiende Eeuw, 12, Nr. 1, 171–185.
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Schneider, I. (2001). Christiaan Huygens. In: Heyde, C.C., Seneta, E., Crépel, P., Fienberg, S.E., Gani, J. (eds) Statisticians of the Centuries. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-0179-0_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-0179-0_5
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