The Gambler

We can predict the future with stunning accuracy as long as we don’t require a precise set of answers. That is, we need to accept that a priori knowledge isn’t about a defining a single outcome; it’s just having confidence in a known range of possibilities. Defining such a range – the Universe of Possibilities – is a useful method in every type of scientific analysis, including methods for medical research, manufacturing quality control, measuring public sentiment, and training neural networks. Funny that such a practical tool came about – at least in part – because of a curious man’s passion for gambling.

Gerolamo Cardano was a physician, though – like other polymaths of the Renaissance era – he was also a lot of other things. Chemist, chess player, philosopher, mathematician… and gambler. He had a quirky and combative personality, which combined with the stigma of his illegitimate birth (a big deal in Renaissance Italy) ensured that Cardano was chronically underemployed. It was probably his financial straits that led to his fascination with gambling and interest in trying to leverage the science of probability to improve his odds of winning easy money. In Chapter five of his book on Games of Chance, the author describes his motives:

“Gambling … would seem to be a natural evil. For that very reason it ought to be discussed by a medical doctor like one of the incurable diseases. … It has been the custom of philosophers to deal with the vices in order that advantage might be drawn from them…”

Interesting to note that Cardano is also the person who invented the gimbal, that mechanical gear that swivels in three degrees of space. It seems to me that being able to envision and quantify the future as a range of possibilities is – philosophically, at least – the same thing as the gimbal’s freedom of motion.

(Stay tuned – soon to be added is content about the Law of Large Numbers, the family-wise error, Bayesian optimization, systems on the Edge of Chaos…)