Forgotten amidst the dusty archives of French technical literature lies a delightful little gem written by Louis Bachelier in 1914 entitled Le Jeu, la chance et le hasard, or The Game, Luck and Randomness. Popular in pre-World War I France, Le Jeu offered the general reader of the time original insights into quantifiable patterns found in both casino games and financial markets; it was perhaps one of the first ';how to get rich quick' books. But its popularity did not survive the early 20th century upheavals in Europe and it was never translated and published into English.

The book in hand, Sketches in Quantitative Finance, is the only known English translation of Le Jeu, la chance et le hasard. It attempts to be a technically precise, word for word, translation of Bachelier's work, preserving his original tone and his refreshingly readable (albeit quirky) style of writing. While this translation's entertainment value is enhanced by the frequent nuggets of knowledge of Bachelier's mathematical perspectives, perhaps the greater pleasure to the English reader will be to experience a freshly exposed artifact of scientific philosophy.

Forgotten amidst the dusty archives of French technical literature lies a delightful little gem written by Louis Bachelier in 1914 entitled Le Jeu, la chance et le hasard, or The Game, Luck and Randomness. Popular in pre-World War I France, Le Jeu… offered the general reader of the time original insights into quantifiable patterns found in both casino games and financial markets; it was perhaps one of the first “how to get rich quick” books. But its popularity did not survive the early 20th century upheavals in Europe and it was never translated and published into English. 

The book in hand, Sketches in Quantitative Finance, is the only known English translation of Le Jeu, la chance et le hasard. It attempts to be a technically precise, word for word, translation of Bachelier’s work, preserving his original tone and his refreshingly readable (albeit quirky) style of writing. While this translation’s entertainment value is enhanced by the frequent nuggets of knowledge of Bachelier’s mathematical perspectives, perhaps the greater pleasure to the English reader will be to experience a freshly exposed artifact of scientific philosophy.

Chapter I. — Randomness

Chapter II. — Probability

Chapter III. — Appreciation of Probabilities

Chapter IV. — Mathematical Expectation

Chapter V. — Moral Expectation

Chapter VI. — The General Idea of Expectation

Chapter VII. — Luck

Chapter VIII. — Mean Values

Chapter IX. — Origins of the Calculation of Probabilities

Chapter X. — Martingales and Lotteries

Chapter XI. — Classification of Probabilities

Chapter XII. — Law of Large Numbers

Chapter XIII. — Law of Bernoulli

Chapter XIV. — The Gambler’s Ruin

Chapter XV. — The Illusions of Gamblers

Chapter XVI. — New Theories of Probabilities

Chapter XVII. — Randomness and Experiments

Chapter XVIII. — Speculation

Chapter XIX. — Transactions of Speculation

Chapter XX. — Probabilities of Future Events from the Observed Events

Chapter XXI. — Errors of Observation

Chapter XXII. — Principle of the Mean

Chapter XXIII. — Curves of Frequency

Chapter XXIV. — The Shot at the Target