Login
📚 Mostly Harmless Statistics
Chapters ▾
1 Introduction to Data2 Organizing Data3 Descriptive Statistics4 Probability5 Discrete Probability Distributions6 Continuous Probability Distributions7 Confidence Intervals for One Population8 Hypothesis Tests for One Population9 Hypothesis Tests and Confidence Intervals for Two Populations10 Chi-Square Tests11 Analysis of Variance12 Correlation and Regression13 Nonparametric Tests

Chapter 4: Probability

One story about how probability theory was developed is that a gambler wanted to know when to bet more and when to bet less. He talked to a couple of friends of his that happened to be mathematicians. Their names were Pierre de Fermat and Blaise Pascal. Since then many other mathematicians have worked to develop probability theory.

French postage stamp honoring Pierre de Fermat, 1601 to 1665, with his portrait, the equation x^n + y^n = z^n, and a note in French that it has no solution for integers n greater than 2; denominations 4.50 F and 0.69 euro.
Figure 1: Fermat and Pascal
French postage stamp honoring Pierre de Fermat, 1601 to 1665, with his portrait, the equation x^n + y^n = z^n, and a note in French that it has no solution for integers n greater than 2; denominations 4.50 F and 0.69 euro.
Monaco postage stamp honoring Blaise Pascal, marked 1623 Monaco 1973, with a portrait of Pascal in purple tones, a crest at the upper right, and a face value of 0.50.

Adapted from Mostly Harmless Statistics by Rachel Webb (Portland State University), hosted on LibreTexts (stats.libretexts.org) and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes were made. License: CC-BY-SA-4.0.