Statistics and Gambling

Statistics can broadly be defined as the science of decision-making in the face of (random) uncertainty. Gambling has the same definition, except in the narrower domain of a gambler making decisions that affect his fortune in games of chance. It is hardly surprising, then, that the two subjects are closely related. Indeed, if the definitions of “game”, “decision”, and “fortune” in the context of gambling are sufficiently broadened, the two subjects become almost indistinguishable. Let’s review a bit of the history of the influence of gambling on the development of probability and statistics. First, of course, gambling is one of the oldest of human activities. The use of a certain type of animal heel bone (called the astragalus) as a crude die dates to about 3500 BCE (and possibly much earlier). The modern six-sided die dates to about 2000 BCE. The early development of probability as a mathematical theory is intimately related to gambling. Indeed, the first probability problems to be analyzed mathematically were gambling problems: