Author Description

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 BERNOULLI'S "Ars Conjectandi", the 200th anniversary of THOMAS BAYES' "Essay towards solving a problem in doctrine of chance", and the 150th anniversary of the PIERRE-SIMON DE LAPLACE'S "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 "Ostwald's Klassi ker der exakten Wissenschaften", Wilhelm Engelman, Leipzig. The two books are difficult to locate.