Laplace’s A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities (1814) is the most influential popular account of chance ever written. Grown from a lecture delivered alongside Lagrange in revolutionary Paris, it states the principles of probability in plain prose, applies them to games, testimony, tribunals and mortality tables, and along the way conjures the all-knowing intelligence posterity calls Laplace’s demon.
‘Probability is relative, in part to our ignorance, in part to our knowledge’ — the essay’s claims have kept philosophers and statisticians arguing for two centuries. Download the free EPUB and read the founding charter of the probabilistic worldview.