Jacob Bernoulli: Umění odhadu (část čtvrtá, pojednávající o aplikaci předchozího učení v záležitostech občanských, mravních a ekonomických) [český překlad a komentáře]

In this volume, we present a Czech translation of a seminal work in probability theory and statistics, namely Part IV of Jacob Bernoulli’s Art of Conjecturing (Ars Conjectandi). It was in this piece that Jacob Bernoulli arrived to what is now known as the law of large numbers. It is this result that underlies all the conclusions based on observation and statistics. Bernoulli’s journey to this result began with (Part I of e Art of Conjecturing) the study of games of chance and (Part II) combinatorics. In the Part III of his treatise, he concentrated on the fairness or lack thereof in specific games of chance. In Part IV, he suggested the possibility of using the previous results in civic, moral, and economic matters. However, even though he suspected his work was more valuable than a rule for squaring the circle would have been, he could not bring his work to a state which he would find fit for publishing for more than a decade and it was eventually only published eight years a& er his death. Jacob Bernoulli’s text is quite lucid in itself, but in order to give the reader some idea about the starting points of Bernoulli’s thoughts, an introduction to the text is included. In the introduction, a brief history of probability theory is included as well as the two major sources of Bernoulli’s thoughts: games of chance and combinatorics.