The taming of chance

What Hacker News says

1. benbreenApr 2026
   Just wanted to flag that the works of Ian Hacking, especially The Emergence of Probability (1975) and The Taming of Chance (1990) are excellent on this. Dense and challenging at times but also well written and the product of a very original mind.

   The latter book has a Wikipedia page with some more info - was surprised to see Hacking not mentioned here since the featured article is partly based on his work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Taming_of_Chance

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2. REALiSTiCNov 2020
   Solid write up. If anyone's interesting in knowing more about how probability _came to be_ 'regarded' as real, i highly recommend Ian Hacking's "The Taming of Chance". Thought provoking in so many ways.
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3. stiffSep 2019
   This is a very good book, fairly mathematical: https://archive.org/details/ofmathemahistory00todhrich

   Ian Hacking has two books, he is a philosopher, accordingly they have a broader outlook: "The Taming of Chance" "The Emergence of Probability"

   Stephen Stigler's "The History of Statistics" seems to be the most popular history of statistics.

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