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by The_Blade 55 days ago
Luca Pacioli invented (or really, put down on paper) double-entry accounting

it is funny how probability has always been way behind other maths. i got to use the Birthday problem at work, once, which made the math undergrad totally worth it

fortunately my Polymarket and Kalshi wagers are protected by AES et al
2 comments
sorokod 55 days ago
In what way was it always behind? This work of Fermat and Pascal is ballpark contemporary to the development of calculus.
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seanhunter 55 days ago
Right, and Cauchy is the person we have to thank for Bayes’ Theorem, and of course Euler, De Moivre, Poisson and Gauss for the Gaussian integral[1]. You can’t really get figures more central to mathematics than that.

[1] Athough Gauss apparently credited it to Laplace.

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sorokod 55 days ago
Most of the names you mention belong to the next (18th) century.

Gauss worked out some sort of probability distribution too.

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c7b 55 days ago
As one lecturer put it: modern probability theory derived from two foundations - measure theory and gambling. The latter explains why it has long lacked mainstream mathematical recognition :)

But that's all in the past. Probability is absolutely established in math academia today, Fields medals and all. And despite its applied nature it's pervasive even in pure math.

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