Frequentist Probability - History

History

The frequentist view was arguably foreshadowed by Aristotle, in Rhetoric, when he wrote:

the probable is that which for the most part happens

It was given explicit statement by Robert Leslie Ellis in "On the Foundations of the Theory of Probabilities" read on 14 February 1842, (and much later again in "Remarks on the Fundamental Principles of the Theory of Probabilities"). Antoine Augustin Cournot presented the same conception in 1843, in Exposition de la théorie des chances et des probabilités.

Perhaps the first elaborate and systematic exposition was by John Venn, in The Logic of Chance: An Essay on the Foundations and Province of the Theory of Probability (published editions in 1866, 1876, 1888).

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