Norton, John D. (2022) Chance Combinatorics: The Theory that History Forgot. [Preprint]

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Abstract

Seventeenth century "chance combinatorics" was a self-contained theory. It had an objective notion of chance derived from physical devices with chance properties, such as die casts, combinatorics to count chances and, to interpret their significance, a rule for converting these counts into fair wagers. It lacked a notion of chance as a measure of belief, a precise way to connect chance counts with frequencies and a way to compare chances across different games. These omissions were not needed for the theory’s interpretation of chance counts: determining which are fair wagers. The theory provided a model for how indefinitenesses could be treated with mathematical precision in a special case and stimulated efforts to seek a broader theory.

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Item Type:	Preprint
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID Norton, John D. jdnorton@pitt.edu
Additional Information:	To appear in Perspectives on Science
Keywords:	chance, probability, Cardano, Huygens, Jacob Bernoulli
Subjects:	General Issues > Game Theory General Issues > History of Science Case Studies Specific Sciences > Probability/Statistics
Depositing User:	John Norton
Date Deposited:	28 Sep 2023 14:23
Last Modified:	28 Sep 2023 14:23
Item ID:	22597
Subjects:	General Issues > Game Theory General Issues > History of Science Case Studies Specific Sciences > Probability/Statistics
Date:	22 April 2022
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/22597

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