The Emergence of Probability: A Philosophical Study of Early Ideas about Probability, Induction and Statistical Inference (Cambridge Series on Statistical And Probabilistic Mathematics) 2nd Edition

The Emergence of Probability is rightly regarded as a modern day classic. In it, Hacking describes the intellectual archaeology of probability theory in the enlightenment era while connecting these ideas to modern debates on the meaning of probability theory. Though written for those with a good knowledge of statistics, the book is so well written that I was able to read the book in less than a day.Briefly, there are two major philosophical interpretations of probability among contemporary statisticians: the view that probability is epistemic, or something dwelling within the mind, and the view that probability is aleatory, or an aspect of the world.Hacking goes back to the era which generated this dichotomy--from games of chance to annuity calculations--providing a fascinating narrative of the theoretical architecture that contemporary statisticians routinely employ.Thankfully, while exploring the cultural circumstances that led to the birth of this new science, Hawking steers clear of hypothesizing how elements of the scientists' biographies led to their discoveries. In my opinion these conjectures are not falsifiable enough to be interesting.If there is one fault of this book it is that Hacking hoped by illuminating the origins of the ideas that shape probability theory he would aid significantly in finding ways to bridge the gaps in statistical interpretation. As far as I can tell, modern statistics is like modern physics: if the theory generates correct predictions one may ignore the underlying philosophical meaning. But I am not immersed in this literature so I may be misinformed.In short, everyone who uses frequentist or Bayesian statistics on a daily basis should read this book. I do not know of a better description of the birth of probability than that provided in this text.

An amazing account of the emergence of probability in the 17th century. The book drives through the intellectual changes that eventually originated a new and dichotomous vision of probability. This is important not only to philosophers of science but also for applied statisticians that are interested in better understanding the emergence of many of the techniques that dominated statistical inference during the 20th century, and still are predominant. It also helps to understand two different probability concepts that are still prevailing today.

I am working on a book on Mathematical Statistics. For such a book, I need to motivate the concept of a probability. This text provides insight into the formal development of probability. Not to take too much of the story away, but the concept of gaming and dice has to give way to a general theory of probability. This text fills in the story with some of the players. It helps understand their differences.I don't know if was just me, but I struggled with the first three chapters. I didn't mesh with the author's style of historical development. The middle of the book was easier to read. That may be due to the fact that I knew most of the players. Unfortunately, I didn't find the last chapter on induction and Hume useful.

This is not mainly a history in the sense of a practice that sets the record straight as to what happened and how. The primary contribution of this book is to trace how ideas we now take more or less for granted "became possible."

This is a fantastic book. Some of the philosophy behind statistics is laid out. If you're interested in math history this is a must read.

This is the second edition of a book originally published in 1975. The main addition seems to be a large chapter-like section titled "Introduction 2006: The Archaeology of probable reasoning" that puts the work in contect with the thinking, research and publications from 1975-2006 that relate to the topic of the book.The main premise of the book is that although probabilistic ideas may have been around before 1670 and the detailed mathematical theory of probability and statistics occurred in the 20th century, the original work of men such as Pascal, Liebniz, Laplace, De Moivre, Huygens, and Jacques Bernoulli from around 1670 to the early 1700s really mark the emergence of probability as a discipline and the development of mathematical results that spawned the development of various theories of probability that came about in the 20th Century.This book is not a technical book and the specific mathematics that is covered is fairly easy for the layperson to understand. The key Idea is that in the work of Pascal and others dual concepts of probability emerged and the distinctions between the two concepts were not clearly delineated at the time. In a very historical account (much like the works of Porter and Stigler)that is also very philosophical in nature hacking points to the two concepts of probability. One is based solely on relative frequencies of occurrences based on empirical data. This led to the development in the 20th century of the work by Richard von Mises and A. N. Kolmogorov. The second concept is based on degrees of belief and led shortly to the work of Thomas Bayes and in the 20th century, Bruno De Finetti, Harold Jeffreys and L. J. Savage in what became known as the Bayesian or subjectivist school of probability and statistical inference.Hacking refers to the frequentist approach as aleatory probability and the Bayesian approach as epistemic probability. Hacking sees more than two schools of probability, induction and statistical inference. It is Hacking's contention that the emergence of probability can be attributed precisely to the time about 1670 when the work of Pascal first came out. He sees this strong development as the result of the need for probability in several areas. The earliest was games of chance. But it was only because of issues in the law, theology, economics, physics, atronomy and other sciences that the need led to the field flourishing with the top minds of the 17th and 18th centuries addressing the philosphical and mathematical issues. Included were Newton, Liebniz, Pascal, De Moivre, Laplace, Huygens and Bernoulli.As a professional statistician I found it interesting to learn how the works of the late 1600s and early 1700s influenced probability and statistics as it developed in the 20th century. Some of this work was familiar to me but much of it was not. For example, I found it interesting to learn that the "first" theorem in probability wsa Jacques Benoulli's proof of the weak law of large numbers. This was given as part of his work "Ars conjectandi", the art of conjecturing. Bernoulli died in 1705 and it wasn't until 1713 that his Nephew Nicholas Bernoulli was able to get it into print.This book is very well researched and the author presents his case in a very articulate manner. I think anyone with an serious interest in probability would enjoy this book. It also contains an excellent bibliography that is 15 pages long. I have not read it but I expect that the authors other book "The Taming of Chance" would be equally informative and fascinating.

Excellent