Friday, December 24, 2010

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

A fun book that describes the August 24, 1654, letter from Blaise Pascal to Pierre de Fermat that lay the foundation of probability theory. Describing the correspondence between these two French mathematicians that ensued during 1654, this book explains how a mathematical problem related to gambling set in motion a new mathematical field that allowed mathematicians (and statisticians, stock brokers, gamblers, etc.) to predict possible future outcomes of different events.

3 1/2 out of 5 stars