‎POISSON (S.D.)‎
‎Recherches sur la probabilité des jugements en matière criminelle et en matière civile précédées des règles générales du calcul des probabilités -- EDITION ORIGINALE‎

‎P., Bachelier, 1837, un volume in 4 relié en demi-basane havane, dos orné de filets dorés (reliure de l'époque), (pièce de titre frottée, un mors fendu), (2),9pp., (1-errata), 415pp.‎

Reference : 8684

‎---- EDITION ORIGINALE ---- "POISSON'S MAJOR WORK ON PROBABILITY" ---- In "Recherches sur la probabilité des jugements en matière criminelle et en matière civile", a work of considerable repute, Poisson defend the universality of the proabilistic thesis and demonstrate the conformability to the order of nature of the regularities that the calculus of probability, without recourse to hidden causes, reveals when things are subjected to a great number of observations. It is to Poisson that we owe the term "law of large numbers". He improved Laplace's work by relating it explicity to Jacob Bernoulli's fundamental theorem and by showing that the invariance in the prior probabilites of mutually exclusive events is not a necessary condition for calculating the approximate probabilities. It is lso from Poisson that we derive the study of a problem that Laplace had passed over, the case of great asymmetry beztween opposte events, such that the prior probability of either event is very small. The formula for evaluaton that he proposed for this case was not recognized or used ntil the end of the nineteenth century". (DSB Supplément p. 489)**8684/ARB6-7112/J1‎