The Probabilists

Abstract

Bernoulli’s contribution to mathematical economics was not intended as such; it was intended as a contribution to the theory of probability and was delivered before the St Petersburg Academy of Sciences in 1738.¹ It was published in the same year under the title ‘Specimen theoriae novae de mensura sortis’.² In this Bernoulli is concerned with the problem of the value of a game to the individual and arrives essentially to the same conclusions as Mariotte. Contrary, however, to Mariotte, he is not satisfied simply with the logical argument but applies this to the theory of probability by making use, for the first time in a writing of economic character, of both analytic geometry and the differential calculus.