E813 -- Analyse d'un probleme du calcul des probabilites
(Analysis of a problem in the calculus of probabilities)
Summary:
The Genoise lottery was the first number lottery, and as such drew much attention from 18th Century mathematicians.
Its chief expositors were Nicolas Bernoulli and Euler. Euler himself devoted at least five papers to the subject:
E338,
E412,
E600,
E812, along with this one.
In this paper, Euler determined the probability that a ticket will be drawn
0, 1, 2, ... times in n successive drawings of r tickets from an urn.
This paper was not published until
1862, in the Opera Postuma.
Publication:
-
Originally published in Opera Postuma 1, 1862, pp. 336-341
-
Opera Omnia: Series 1, Volume 7, pp. 495 - 506
Documents Available:
- Original publication: E813
- Richard Pulskamp has put together a
fantastic page on Euler's Probability & Statistics,
including a lot of interesting background and historical work. The page includes a
translation of E813.
- Rob Bradley
of Adelphi Univeristy has written an excellent paper,
Euler and the Genoese Lottery
in which he examines a significant fraction of Euler's work on probability.
- Euler wrote four other papers on the Genoese lottery:
- E338, Sur la probabilite des sequences dans la lotterie Genoise
- E412, Solution d'une questione tres dificle dans le calcul des probabilites
- E600, Solutio quarundam quaestionum difficilorum in calculo probabilis
- E812, Relexiones sur une espese singulier de loterie nommee loterie genoise
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