Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2022
Peirce writes “It is an indubitable result of the theory of probabilities that every gambler, if he continues long enough, must ultimately be ruined … if he plays long enough he will be sure some time to have such a run against him as to exhaust his entire fortune. … The same thing is true of an insurance company. Let the directors take the utmost pains … according to the doctrine of chances, the time must come, at last, when their losses will bring them to a stop.” This note shows that under the most plausible interpretation of the quoted passage Peirce is committed to a mathematical untruth.
1 In “The Doctrine of Chances,” Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, ed. by Hartshorne and Weiss, Harvard University Press, Vol. II. The quotations given are from paragraph 653, pp. 396–7. They may also be found in the collection Chance, Love, and Logic, pp. 71–2.