2013-08-07

Laplace on Games

Nothing long to post today, but I share this thought from Simon Laplace in his Théorie Analytique des Probabilités (1812) which connects two of my primary interests:

"It is remarkable that a science which began with the consideration of games of chance should have become the most important object of human knowledge."

2 comments:

  1. That's one of the quotes I always use in my statistics lectures. And the letter to Pascal written by the Chevalier de Mere.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. That's great! Another thing I always like to quote is Kierkegaard's: "There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true." That's now how I always introduce the distinction between Type I and Type II errors in hypothesis testing.

      Delete