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sorokodyesterday at 4:20 PM1 replyview on HN

In what way was it always behind? This work of Fermat and Pascal is ballpark contemporary to the development of calculus.


Replies

seanhunteryesterday at 4:39 PM

Right, and Cauchy is the person we have to thank for Bayes’ Theorem, and of course Euler, De Moivre, Poisson and Gauss for the Gaussian integral[1]. You can’t really get figures more central to mathematics than that.

[1] Athough Gauss apparently credited it to Laplace.