The Unfinished Game: Pascal, Fermat and the Seventeenth-Century Letter that Made the World Modern

Description

Monday, August 24, 1654 -- A problem worthy of great minds -- On the shoulders of a giant -- A man of slight build -- The great amateur -- Terrible confusions -- Out of the gaming rooms -- Into the everyday world -- The chance of your life -- The measure of our ignorance.;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. Monday, August 24, 1654 -- A problem worthy of great minds -- On the shoulders of a giant -- A man of slight build -- The great amateur -- Terrible confusions -- Out of the gaming rooms -- Into the everyday world -- The chance of your life -- The measure of our ignorance.