An Introduction to Probability: The History of Probability

I was recently loaned an excellent book entitled Against the Gods, The Remarkable Story of Risk, and have posted the first two chapters below as a reading assignment. Though this book delves more deeply into mathematics as it progresses, the first few chapters detail the history of mankind's use of mathematics to understand risk and make predictions, and how this helped to separate humans from a time where we believed that things would be unilaterally controlled by the gods.

In understanding mathematics, it is very useful to understand how and why certain types of mathematics are invented. They weren't just invented to punish school kids or to make some people think they were smarter than others (though mathematics has proven effective for both of these purposes). Probability, for instance, was meant as a way to systematize information so that we could make repeatable and reliable predictions about events that have a component of randomness. This can extend from playing a game of Poker to deciding to take a road trip to Colombia and not having our caravan seized by rebels.

So, to begin our study of probability, and how we can use mathematics to understand it, let's begin by taking a little history lesson . . .

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