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Unfinished Game: Pascal, Fermat, And The Seventeenth-Century Letter That Made The World Modern (2014)

by Keith J. Devlin(Favorite Author)

3.56 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1282748289 (ISBN13: 9781282748286)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Basic Books (AZ)

review 1: Letter writing is most certainly a lost art. "I beg you to inform me how you would proceed in your research on this problem. I shall receive your reply with respect and joy, even if your opinion should be contrary to mine." contrasted with today's modern flame wars. Having just taken a class in decision quality at Stanford, I found the discussions of Baye's formula and assessing risk by using probability very interesting. It is difficult to imagine a time before probability mathematics.
review 2: The low rating (for me, I know I rate high but I like to think I read what I'm interested in and know about so that my discrimintion is shown as much by my selection as my evaluation) is more due to my weaknesses in math than Devlin's style or story. I would have... more liked more context (and I mean non-mathematical context)--like the mise en scène of late Seventeeth Century France and the other eras and locales included here. I once had a European history prof who made the development of annuities really exciting. Annuities are around because of the letters about the probabilities in coin toss games sent between Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat, the focus of this little book. Devlin does get into the same stuff as that professor, but it wasn't as engaging for me. He also probably regrets the books came out before derivatives were denigrated. But the "math guy" on NPR is adept with words and witty, and made me feel better when he noted that many calculus students don't understand what they are doing, even though they are doing it. I sometimes didn't understand what I was reading here, even though I was reading it (sometime with bemused enjoyment). I did get a better idea of what a "standard deviation" is, which helps me to explain normed standardized testing for kids better. less

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