Gilbert and Sullivan, Pirates of PenzanceĦ “Suam habet fortuna rationem.” (Chance has its reasons.)ħ “The conception of chance enters into the very first steps of scientific activity in virtue of the fact that no observation is absolutely correct. About binomial theorem I’m teeming with a lot o’ news, With many cheerful facts about the square of the hypoteneuse.

I’m very well acquainted too with matters mathematical, I understand equations, both the simple and quadratical. Let me assure you of that!” Agatha Christie The Mirror Crack’dĤ “There is no problem in all mathematics that cannot be solved by direct counting”ĥ Gilbert and Sullivan, Pirates of Penzance

If you start thinking about things like that, you would go round the bend. “I think you’re begging the question,’’ said Haydock, “and I can see looming ahead one of those terrible exercises in probability where six men have white hats and six men have black hats and you have to work it out by mathematics how likely it is that the hats will get mixed up and in what proportion. “The theory of probability as a mathematical discipline can and should be developed from axioms in exactly the same way as geometry and algebra.” Andrei Kolmogorov Foundations of the Theory of Probability, 1933 “The most important questions of life are indeed, for the most part, really only problems of probability.” Pierre Simon Laplace Théorie Analytique des Probabilités, 1812Ģ Andrei Kolmogorov Foundations of the Theory of Probability, 1933 1 Pierre Simon Laplace Théorie Analytique des Probabilités, 1812

Enigmas of Chance by Mark Kac