Bruno de Finetti

Bruno de Finetti (Innsbruck, June 13, 1906 - Rome, July 20, 1985) was an Italian probabilist and statistician, noted for the "operational subjective" conception of probability. The classic exposition of his distinctive theory is the 1937 "La prévision: ses lois logiques, ses sources subjectives," Annales de l'Institute Henri Poincaré, 7, 1-68, which discussed probability founded on the coherence of betting odds and the consequences of exchangeability.

Bibliography

de Finetti in English

(The following are translations of works originally published in Italian or French.)

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• "Probabilism: A Critical Essay on the Theory of Probability and on the Value of Science," (translation of 1931 article) in Erkenntnis, volume 31, September 1989. The entire double issue is devoted to de Finetti's philosophy of probability.
• "Foresight: its Logical Laws, Its Subjective Sources," (translation of the 1937 article in French) in H. E. Kyburg and H. E. Smokler (eds), Studies in Subjective Probability, New York: Wiley, 1964.
• Theory of Probability, (translation of 1970 book) 2 volumes, New York: Wiley, 1974-5.

Discussions

• D. V. Lindley, "Bruno de Finetti, 1906-1985 (Obituary)" Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A, 149, p. 252 (1986).

The following books have a chapter on de Finetti and references to further literature.

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• Jan von Plato, Creating Modern Probability Theory, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994
• Donald Gillies, Philosophical Theories of Probability, London: Routledge, 2000.