The Unfinished game: Pascal, Fermat and the letters

Keith Devlin0465009107, 9780465009107, 9780786726325

Before the mid-seventeenth century, scholars generally agreed that it was impossible to predict something by calculating mathematical outcomes. One simply could not put a numerical value on the likelihood that a particular event would occur. Even the outcome of something as simple as a dice roll or the likelihood of showers instead of sunshine was thought to lie in the realm of pure, unknowable chance.
The issue remained intractable until Blaise Pascal wrote to Pierre de Fermat in 1654, outlining a solution to the “unfinished game” problem: how do you divide the pot when players are forced to end a game of dice before someone has won? The idea turned out to be far more seminal than Pascal realized. From it, the two men developed the method known today as probability theory.
In The Unfinished Game, mathematician and NPR commentator Keith Devlin tells the story of this correspondence and its remarkable impact on the modern world: from insurance rates, to housing and job markets, to the safety of cars and planes, calculating probabilities allowed people, for the first time, to think rationally about how future events might unfold.

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Table of contents :
Cover……Page 1
Copyright……Page 5
CONTENTS……Page 6
Note to the Reader……Page 8
PREFACE……Page 10
1 Monday, August 24, 1654……Page 12
2 A Problem Worthy of Great Minds……Page 24
3 On the Shoulders of a Giant……Page 42
4 A Man of Slight Build……Page 60
5 The Great Amateur……Page 76
6 Terrible Confusions……Page 84
7 Out of the Gaming Room……Page 96
8 Into the Everyday World……Page 116
9 The Chance of Your Life……Page 128
10 The Measure of Our Ignorance……Page 156
The Key Letter from Pascal to Fermat……Page 182
INDEX……Page 194