Encyclopedia > Pierre Simon Laplace

  Article Content

Pierre-Simon Laplace

Redirected from Pierre Simon Laplace

Pierre-Simon Laplace (March 23, 1749 - March 5, 1827), French mathematician.

Discoverer of the Laplace transform and Laplace's equation. Believer in causal determinism.

One curious formula for the probability that the sun would rise was given by Laplace. He claimed that this probability was <math>(d+1)/(d+2)</math>, where d is the number of days that the sun has risen in the past. Laplace claimed that this formula applied in all cases where we knew nothing, or where what we did know was swamped by what we didn't.

External links:



All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

 
  Search Encyclopedia

Search over one million articles, find something about almost anything!
 
 
  
  Featured Article
Springs, New York

... density of 177.0/km² (458.2/mi²). The racial makeup of the town is 89.82% White, 1.47% African American, 0.20% Native American, 1.45% Asian, 0.02% Pacific ...

 
 
 
This page was created in 40.1 ms