De Méré's Paradox/Historical Note
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Historical Note on De Méré's Paradox
The Chevalier de Méré first raised this question in the $17$th century.
He believed the two events described should have the same probabilities.
Empirical investigation (in other words: he found he was losing more money than he believed he ought to have been doing) caused him to rethink this.
Hence he posed this problem to his friend mathematician Blaise Pascal, who solved it.
Sources
- 1986: Geoffrey Grimmett and Dominic Welsh: Probability: An Introduction ... (previous) ... (next): $1$: Events and probabilities: $1.5$: Discrete sample spaces: Exercise $16$