Analysis Correspondence

Abstract

The origins of systematic combinatorial research can be found in the works of Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Ferrnat. Questions about Chevalier de Méré’s game led to the distinction between individual combinations and the calculation of favorable outcomes. Three chapters of Jakob Bernoulli’s book ‘Ars Conjectandi’ arc devoted to the first systematic exposition of combinatorial facts. The works of Bernoulli and Gottfried Leibniz helped to establish combinatorics as an independent subject. In particular, Leibniz was first to attempt a full understanding of combinatorics in his dissertation ‘Ars Combinatoria’, in which, apparently, the term ‘combinatorics’ originated.