Chapter notes

The first general methods for solving probability problems were discussed in a famous correspondence between B. Pascal and P. de Fermat, which began in 1654, and in a book by C. Huygens in 1657. Rigorous probability theory began with the work of J. Bernoulli in 1713 and A. De Moivre in 1730. Further developments of the theory were provided by P. S. de Laplace, S.-D. Poisson, and C. F. Gauss.

Sums of random variables were originally studied by P. L. Chebyshev and A. A. Markov. Probability theory was axiomatized by A. N. Kolmogorov in 1933. Bounds on the tails of distributions were provided by Chernoff [59] and Hoeffding [150]. Seminal work in random combinatorial structures was done by P. Erdös.

Knuth [182] and Liu [205] are good references for elementary combinatorics and counting. Standard textbooks such as Billingsley [42], Chung [60], Drake [80], Feller [88], and Rozanov [263] offer comprehensive introductions to probability.