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Essai philosophique sur les probabilités (A Philosophical Essay on Probability), was a nontechnical introduction to the laws of chance written by Laplace in 1814 as an elaboration of a lecture he delivered in the normal schools in 1795. In contrast to what he did in his 1812 masterpiece Théorie analytique des probabilités (The Analytical Theory of Probability), here Laplace wanted to introduce the concept of probability without the use of calculus and show that every occurrence affecting human life (including hope and fear) could be measured. In fact, he concluded the Introduction section as follows:
I hope that the reflections given in this essay may merit the attention of philosophers and direct it to a subject so worthy of their engaging minds.
Reasoning along these lines, in this essay, Laplace introduced ten general principles of basic probability theory. In this paper we will look into these ten principles, and see how they apply to the teaching of probability today.
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