Page:A philosophical essay on probabilities Tr. Truscott, Emory 1902.djvu/106

96 appreciable than in the tropics. M. Ramond has recognized and determined it at Clermont, the chief place of the district of Puy-de-Dôme, by a series of precise observations made during several years; he has even found that it is smaller in the months of winter than in other months. The numerous observations which I have discussed in order to estimate the influence of attractions of the sun and the moon upon the barometric heights at Paris have served me in determining their diurnal variation. Comparing the heights at nine o'clock in the morning with those of the same days at three o'clock in the afternoon, this variation is manifested with so much evidence that its mean value each month has been constantly positive for each of the seventy-two months from January 1, 1817, to January 1, 1823; its mean value in these seventy-two months has been almost .8 of a millimeter, a little less than at Clermont and much less than at the equator. I have recognized that the mean result of the diurnal variations of the barometer from 9 o'clock to 3  has been only .5428 millimeter in the three months of November, December, January, and that it has risen to 1.0563 millimeters in the three following months, which coincides with the observations of M. Ramond. The other months offer nothing similar.

In order to apply to these phenomena the calculation of these probabilities, I commenced by determining the law of the probability of the anomalies of the diurnal variation due to hazard. Applying it then to the observations of this phenomenon, I found that it was a bet of more than 300,000 against one that a regular cause produced it. I do not seek to determine this cause; I