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Christiaan Huygens

b. 14 April 1629 d. 8 July 1695

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Book cover Statisticians of the Centuries

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.

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  • Schneider, Ivo (1980). The contributions of Christiaan Huygens to the development of a calculus of probabilities. Janus, 67, 269–279.

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  • 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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© 2001 Springer Science+Business Media New York

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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

  • Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY

  • Print ISBN: 978-0-387-95283-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4613-0179-0

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