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The ancient Greeks -- do you have anything in particular in mind that they did? They certainly knew combinatorics at a level not guessed at until pretty recentl
by abecedarius 9y ago
The ancient Greeks -- do you have anything in particular in mind that they did? They certainly knew combinatorics at a level not guessed at until pretty recently (e.g. Schröder–Hipparchus numbers) but I haven't heard of any evidence for probability.
- analog31 9y agoI was only thinking of the generalizations I've read, that Bayesianism is a "way of thinking," not about the math.
- abecedarius 9y agoOK. Every now and then I hear of some old Greek fragment that was "ahead of its time", and it's gotten to be a hobby to collect them.
- analog31 9y agoI think it's actually interesting to figure out what things the Greeks hadn't figured out in their time -- possibly a much smaller set. They didn't have algebra (e.g., the quadratic formula eluded them), and something must have happened after their time, to bring us modern empirical science. Still it remains impressive to me what they were able to accomplish without modern tools.