A Historical and Philosophical Perspective on Probability

This chapter presents a twenty first century historical and philosophical perspective on probability, related to the teaching of probability. It is important to remember the historical development as it provides pointers to be taken into account in developing a modern curriculum in teaching probability at all levels. We include some elements relating to continuous as well as discrete distributions. Starting with initial ideas of chance two millennia ago, we move on to the correspondence of Pascal and Fermat, and insurance against risk. Two centuries of debate and discussion led to the key fundamental ideas; the twentieth century saw the climax of the axiomatic approach from Kolmogorov.