On Jacob Bernoulli, the Law of Large Numbers, and the Origins of the Central Limit Theorem

In my previous article, I introduced you to the Central Limit Theorem. We disassembled its definition, looked at its applications, and watched it do its magic in a simulation.

I ended that article with a philosophical question asked by a famous 17th century mathematician about how nature behaves when confronted with a large collection of anything. A question that was to lead to the discovery of the Central Limit Theorem more than a century later.

In this article, I’ll root into this question, and into the life of the mathematician who pondered over it, and into the big discovery that unfolded from it.

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