The Book on Games of Chance

Girolamo Cardano's The Book on Games of Chance, published posthumously in 1663, is recognized as the first systematic computation of probabilities. This work predates the more widely known correspondence on probability between Pierre de Fermat and Blaise Pascal in 1654. Cardano calculated odds for games of luck by counting equally probable cases. However, his work was not widely known until after the elements of probability theory were already established by mathematicians in Europe. The theory of chances began to flourish in the 17th century as part of the "new science," where calculation gained credibility. Cardano's book was not published until 1663, by which time the elements of the theory of chances were already well known to mathematicians in Europe.12