Dirichlet's contributions to mathematical probability theory

DOI10.1006/HMAT.1994.1007MaRDI QIDQ1323508zbMATH OpenOpenAlexWikidataFDO

Authors Hans Fischer

Publication date 11 September 1994

Published in Historia Mathematica (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://doi.org/10.1006/hmat.1994.1007

zbMATH Keywords

central limit theorem Chebyshev method of least squares

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

History of mathematics in the 19th century (01A55) History of probability theory (60-03)

Review text

The author mainly describes Dirichlet's unpublished courses on probability theory (1838-1846) which the latter began delivering in 1829. Dirichlet did not study either the ``moral applications of probability or its philosophical aspects and, while discussing the method of least squares, neglected its substantiations made by Gauss. Dirichlet based his course on the integral calculus and, in proving the central limit theorem, presented it more rigorously than Chebyshev did in 1879/1880. However, the author does not remark that 1) Chebyshev himself noted that his derivation was not rigorous or that 2) later on (1887) he offered a much better substantiation.

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