Abstract

This paper discusses some of the founding work in the field of probabalistic mathematics, that of Jakob Bernoulli, the seventeenth-century Swiss scientist. By discussing similarities between Bernoulli's formulation of the mathematics to evaluate the probability of any given event and the forensic (or courtroom) rhetorics which Bernoulli had studied in school, this paper suggests that the foundations of probabilistic mathematics might well be rooted in part in forensic rhetoric.

About the Author

Terri Palmer is a doctoral candidate in Rhetoric at Carnegie Mellon University. She teaches in both the Mathematics Department and the Professional Writing Program at CMU.

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