Pascal

One of Pascal’s achievements as a mathematician was precisely to demonstrate that gambling, and chance taking in general, could be given a scientific basis, a rational assessment of risk. It was worth betting on a lesser rather than a greater certainty, at least when the possible gains form the former are themselves sufficiently great. Now where the people are concerned, this law of probability suggests that very often their conduct is, in line with the second type of justification we have singled out, perfectly rational.

Pascal studied probability theory in his celerated corrspondence with Pierre de Fermat, June/July-25 September 1654, the factorization of multiples and the summing of power of series of numbers in arithmetical progression.

In 1665, Pascal's famous arithmetical triangle was published. Pascal's Triangle is a well known mathematical pattern. This pattern was actually discovered in China, but it has been named after the first westerner to study it. According to Yunze He, "Pascal's" triangle was first developed during the Song Dynasty by a mathematician named Hue Yang.

Pascal's Triangle & Probability

Chance is a part of our everyday lives. Not everything in life, however, can be predicted using science and technology. For example, a toss of a coin may result in either a head or a tail. Also, the sex of a new-born baby may turn out to be male or female. In these cases, the individual outcomes are uncertain such as the belief of God. Pascal developed in his Pascal's wager(1669), in which weigh the two alternatives that one either believes in God or does not believe in God.

Pascal developed a 'decision-theoretic' argument in favour of believing in God. It is an attempt to argue that it is reasonable to believe in the existence of God. There are practical reasons motivate a decision by the decision theory and probability theory. So Pascal's 'reasonable' conclusion is based on the P(G B), the probability of God existing and a Belief that God exists, that is the conditional probability. Gambling may, or may not, be a good thing, but developing a theory which looks at modelling risk is useful for many modern aspects of planning.

Pascal's wager argued that since God either existed or He did not, since the penalties for being wrong were much greater for non-belief, and since the rewards for being right were very much greater for belief, it was much more reasonable to believe in Christianity than to reject it. It is a long unclassified fragment in which Pascal sought to apply probability theory, the magnitude of profit or loss and the issue of risk to the question of belief in God.

It is simply to give justifications for having the belief that God exists. Pascal's wager is not to prove that God exists, but only to show that you are justified in having reasons for having the belief in God. It gives affirmations for the belief in God but not give reasons which involve truth or falsity.

So,the second part of the website will talk about the Pascal's wager.

Gambling on God

References:

1. Adamson, Donald,Blaise Pascal: Mathematican,Physicist and Thinker about God ( New York,St. Martin's Press,1995)

2.http//www.cc.gatech.edu/classes/cs6751_97_winter/Topics/stat-meas/probHist.html

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