Esquisse d’une Théorie Nouvelle de Mesure du Sort par Daniel Bernoulli. Avertissement du traducteur. (French) Zbl 0548.01023

Charreton, Raoul

Cah. Sémin. Hist. Math. 6, 61-77 (1985).

This is the first French translation of D. Bernoulli’s ”Specimen theoriae novae de mensura sortis” (1738) (some remarks and notes are added). There exists already a German translation by Alfred Pringsheim, Leipzig 1896, and an English one by L. Sommer in Econometrica 22, 23-36 (1954). These two translations together with the Latin original and a discussion by L. J. Savage have been edited in 1967 by Gregg Press, Farnborough, England. This memoir is devoted to the use of ”utility” and ”moral expectation” in the Petersburg Problem (also called ”Petersburg Paradox”) and in freight insurance. Unfortunately Bernoulli does not distinguish between random quantity and its expectation. The moral expectation is similar to the Weber-Fechner law, and the log function is widely used in information theory [see O. B. Shejnin, D. Bernoulli’s work on probability, RETE, Strukturgeschichte der Naturwissenschaften 1, 273-300 (1972; Zbl 0276.01012)].

Reviewer: H.Grimm

MSC:

01A75	Collected or selected works; reprintings or translations of classics
01A50	History of mathematics in the 18th century
60-03	History of probability theory

Keywords:

utility; moral expectation; Petersburg Problem; freight insurance; random quantity; Weber-Fechner law; information theory

Citations:

Zbl 0276.01012