The St. Petersburg Paradox
A coin-flipping game whose average winnings are infinite. How much of your own money would you actually pay to play?
1713 (posed by Nicolaus Bernoulli), 1738 (published by Daniel Bernoulli)19 min read
Swiss mathematics
Nicolaus Bernoulli
1687 – 1759
Nicolaus I Bernoulli, professor at Basel and a nephew of Jacob and Johann Bernoulli. He worked mainly through correspondence, and it is a letter that earns him his place here: writing to Pierre Rémond de Montmort on 9 September 1713, he proposed the coin-doubling wager whose expected value is infinite. He never published a resolution of it himself.