STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF PROBABILITY AND STATISTICS n. THE BEGINNINGS OF A PROBABILITY CALCULUS

of dicing and gaming up to the time of Format and Pascal, who are popularly but erroneously supposed to have founded the calculus of probability. In this paper I shall try to trace the evolution of the idea of a probability calculus with especial reference to what Dr David calls the tantalizing period prior to A.D. 1600. 2. During the dark ages gaming was prevalent throughout Europe. At some unknown point of time dice finally ousted tan as instruments of play; and since cards were not introduced until about A.D. 1350 gaming must have been conducted mainly with dice for nearly a thousand years. Efforts on the part of Church and State to control the evils associated with it were as ineffectual then as they are today, and nothing is more indicative ~of the persistence of gambling than the continual attempts made to prevent it. The sermon of St Cyprian of Carthage De Aleatoribus (c. A.D. 240) was echoed twelve hundred years later in the more famous sermon of St Bernardino of Siena Contra Alearum Ludos of A.D. 1423. The gambling of the Germans referred to by Tacitus may perhaps have become more moderate but was equally prevalent in the thirteenth century when we find Friedrich II (1232) issuing a law de aleatoribus and Louis IX (1255) forbidding not only the play bu