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Peirce, Gambling, and Insurance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Joseph S. Ullian
Joseph S. Ullian*
Affiliation:
University of California
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Abstract

Peirce writes “It is an indubitable result of the theory of probabilities that every gambler, if he continues long enough, must ultimately be ruined … if he plays long enough he will be sure some time to have such a run against him as to exhaust his entire fortune. … The same thing is true of an insurance company. Let the directors take the utmost pains … according to the doctrine of chances, the time must come, at last, when their losses will bring them to a stop.” This note shows that under the most plausible interpretation of the quoted passage Peirce is committed to a mathematical untruth.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , January 1962 , pp. 79 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1962

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References

1 In “The Doctrine of Chances,” Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, ed. by Hartshorne and Weiss, Harvard University Press, Vol. II. The quotations given are from paragraph 653, pp. 396–7. They may also be found in the collection Chance, Love, and Logic, pp. 71–2.