The Unfinished Game

Download or read book The Unfinished Game written by Keith Devlin and published by . This book was released on 2010-03-23 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before the mid-seventeenth century, scholars generally agreed that it was impossible to predict something by calculating mathematical outcomes. One simply could not put a numerical value on the likelihood that a particular event would occur. Even the outcome of something as simple as a dice roll or the likelihood of showers instead of sunshine was thought to lie in the realm of pure, unknowable chance. The issue remained intractable until Blaise Pascal wrote to Pierre de Fermat in 1654, outlining a solution to the "unfinished game" problem: how do you divide the pot when players are forced to.