Page:A philosophical essay on probabilities Tr. Truscott, Emory 1902.djvu/60

50 number. The observation then of the law of the numbers which express these integrals, a series of interpolations and happy inductions where one perceives the germ of the calculus of definite integrals which has so much exercised geometricians and which is one of the fundaments of my new Theory of Probabilities, gave him the ratio of the area of the circle to the square of its diameter expressed by an infinite product, which, when one stops it, confines this ratio to limits more and more converging; this is one of the most singular results in analysis. But it is remarkable that Wallis, who had so well considered the fractional exponents of radical powers, should have continued to note these powers as had been done before him. Newton in his Letters to Oldembourg, if I am not mistaken, was the first to employ the notation of these powers by fractional exponents. Comparing by the way of induction, of which Wallis had made such a beautiful use, the exponents of the powers of the binomial with the coefficients of the terms of its development in the case where this exponent is integral and positive, he determined the law of these coefficients and extended it by analogy to fractional and negative powers. These various results, based upon the notation of Descartes, show his influence on the progress of analysis. It has still the advantage of giving the simplest and fairest idea of logarithms, which are indeed only the exponents of a magnitude whose successive powers, increasing by infinitely small degrees, can represent all numbers.

But the most important extension that this notation has received is that of variable exponents, which constitutes exponential calculus, one of the most fruitful