The Unity and Diversity of Probability

Abstract

Mathematical probability and its child, mathematical statistics, are relative newcomers on the intellectual scene. Mathematical probability was invented in 1654 by two Frenchman, Blaise Pascal and Pierre Fermat. Mathematical statistics emerged from the work of the continental mathematicians Gauss and Laplace in the early 1800s, and it became widely useful only in this century, as the result of the work of three Englishmen, Francis Galton, Karl Pearson, and R.A. Fisher. In spite of these late beginnings, probability and statistics have acquired a dazzling range of applications. Inside the university, we see them taught and used in a remarkable range of disciplines. Statistics is used routinely in engineering, business, and medicine, and in every social and natural science. It is making inroads in law and in the humanities. Probability, aside from its use in statistical theory, is finding new applications in engineering, computer science, economics, psychology, and philosophy.