Bernoulli 1713 Bayes 1763 Laplace 1813

The present volume represents the Proceedings of an International Research Seminar organized in 1963 by the Statistical Laboratory Uni- versity of California Berkeley on the occasion of a remarkable triple anniversary: the 250th anniversary of jACOB BERNOULLIs Ars Conjectandi the 200th anniversary of THOMAS BAYES Essay towards solving a problem in doctrine of chance and the !50th anniversary of the PIERRE-SIMON DE LAPLACEs Essai philosophique sur les probabilites. Financial assistance of the National Science Foundation without which the Seminar could not have been held is gratefully acknowledged. The publication of Ars Conjectandi in 1713 was a milestone in the history of probability theory. Here for the first time appeared a careful description of the now well-known combinatorial methods which give solutions of many problems on simple games of chance. Also Ars Conjectandi contains the Bernoulli numbers theorems relating to the duration of games and to the ruin of gamblers and above all the state- ment and proof of the famous Bernoulli weak law of large numbers. Even though the original Latin edition of Ars Conjectandi was followed by several in modern languages currently the book is not easily accessible. Apparently the last re-publication in German occurred in 1899 in two issues No. 107 and No. 108 of the series Ostwalds Klassi- ker der exakten Wissenschaften Wilhelm Engelman Leipzig. The two books are difficult to locate.