Table of Contents

The book and its relation to other works; a sketch of the background in mathematics and natural philosophy; early concepts of probability and chance; Cardano and "Liber de Ludo Aleae", 1657; John Graunt and the observations made upon the Bills of Morality, 1662; the probabilistic interpretation of Graunt's life table; the early history of life insurance mathematics; mathematical models and statistical methods in astronomy; the Newtonian Revolution in mathematics and science; miscellaneous contributions between 1657 and 1708; the great leap forward, 1708-1718 - a survey; new solutions of old problems, 1708-1718; James Bernoulli and "Ars Conjectandi", 1713; Bernoulli's theorem; tests of significance based on sex ratio at birth and the binomial distribution, 1710-1713; Montmort and the "Essay d`Analyse sur les Jeux de Hazard", 1708 and 1713; the problem of coincidences and the compound probability theorem; the problem of the duration of play, 1708-1718; Nicholas Bernoulli; De Moivre and the "Doctrine of Chances", 1718, 1738 and 1756.