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The problem arose again around 1654 when Chevalier de Méré posed it to Blaise Pascal. Pascal discussed the problem in his ongoing correspondence with Pierre de Fermat. Through this discussion, Pascal and Fermat not only provided a convincing, self-consistent solution to this problem, but also developed concepts that are still fundamental to ...
Blaise Pascal [a] (19 June 1623 – 19 August 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher, and Catholic writer.. Pascal was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax collector in Rouen.
In number theory, Fermat's Last Theorem (sometimes called Fermat's conjecture, especially in older texts) states that no three positive integers a, b, and c satisfy the equation a n + b n = c n for any integer value of n greater than 2. The cases n = 1 and n = 2 have been known since antiquity to have infinitely many solutions. [1]
The earliest known mention of the gambler's ruin problem is a letter from Blaise Pascal to Pierre Fermat in 1656 (two years after the more famous correspondence on the problem of points). [2] Pascal's version was summarized in a 1656 letter from Pierre de Carcavi to Huygens:
The two initiated the communication because earlier that year, a gambler from Paris named Antoine Gombaud had sent Pascal and other mathematicians several questions on the practical applications of some of these theories; in particular he posed the problem of points, concerning a theoretical two-player game in which a prize must be divided ...
In number theory, Fermat's little theorem states that if p is a prime number, then for any integer a, the number a p − a is an integer multiple of p. In the notation of modular arithmetic , this is expressed as a p ≡ a ( mod p ) . {\displaystyle a^{p}\equiv a{\pmod {p}}.}
Through their correspondence in 1654, Fermat and Blaise Pascal helped lay the foundation for the theory of probability. From this brief but productive collaboration on the problem of points, they are now regarded as joint founders of probability theory. [18] Fermat is credited with carrying out the first-ever rigorous probability calculation.
The two initiated the communication because earlier that year, a gambler from Paris named Antoine Gombaud had sent Pascal and other mathematicians several questions on the practical applications of some of these theories; in particular he posed the problem of points, concerning a theoretical two-player game in which a prize must be divided ...