History of Probability Theory

The mathematical theory of probability has its roots in attempts to analyse games of chance by Gerolamo Cardano in the sixteenth century, and by Pierre de Fermat and Blaise Pascal in the seventeenth century (for example the “problem of points”).

Christiaan Huygens published a book on the subject in 1657. Initially, probability theory mainly considered discrete events, and its methods were mainly combinatorial.

Eventually, analytical considerations compelled the incorporation of continuous variables into the theory. This culminated in modern probability theory, on foundations laid by Andrey Nikolaevich Kolmogorov.

Kolmogorov combined the notion of sample space, introduced by Richard von Mises, and measure theory and presented his axiom system for probability theory in 1933.

Fairly quickly this became the mostly undisputed axiomatic basis for modern probability theory but alternatives exist, in particular the adoption of finite rather than countable additivity by Bruno de Finetti.

Most introductions to probability theory treat discrete probability distributions and continuous probability distributions separately. In this text, all theorems and axioms have been explained by a large number of solved examples. This text will prove to be useful for undergraduate and postgraduate students of mathematics.