The theory of Probability originated in the seventeenth century. In 1654, the Paris gambler Le Chevalier de Méré asked Blaise Pascal about certain probabilities that occurred in gaming, such as, if a game is interrupted in the middle, what is the chance that each player would have won had the game continued?
Pascal was intrigued and wrote this question to the eminent mathematician Pierre de Fermat. Russians like Andrei Andreyevich Markov, Andrey Nikolayevich Kolmogorov, and Pafnuty L. Chebyshev created a more traditional mathematical theory of Probability at the start of the 20th century.
American authors Joe Doob and William Feller produced seminal works on probability theory’s mathematical foundations in the 1950s. They made the topic well-known in the West as a crucial branch of pure mathematics with important applications in physics, chemistry, and subsequently, computer science, economics, and finance.
Probability is the science of uncertainty. It provides specific mathematical rules for understanding and analyzing our unfamiliarity. It does not tell us tomorrow’s plan or next week’s weather; instead, it gives us a basis for working with our limited knowledge to make sensible decisions.
Reference: swp0068.dvi (toronto.edu)
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