Probability - how it all started.

Back in the 17th century a French man-about-town called Antoine Gombaud (also known as the Chevalier de Méré) was making a nice little bit of money for himself by betting people that if he rolled a die four times, he would roll at least one ace (i.e. one). He didn't know why this worked in his favour - he simply knew that it did. Unfortunately his friends and acquaintances also quickly cottoned on to the same fact, and he found it increasingly difficult to find anyone prepared to take his bet. So he decided to change things a little and started to bet people that he would roll at least one double ace in 24 rolls of two dice. His logic was that getting a double ace with two dice was six times less likely than getting an ace with one die, and therefore if he multiplied the number of rolls by six his chance of winning would remain the same. He soon realised that this was not happening, and that he was losing money. He therefore wrote to Blaise Pascal, one of the foremost brains of the day to ask him why. Pascal in turn wrote to Pierre de Fermat (he of the famous last theorem) and their subsequent correspondence was the beginning of the mathematical theory of probability.