Talk:Abraham de Moivre

message: My university maths lecturers claimed one should pronounce his surname DE MOY-VER (i.e. in an english-phonetic way), saying that upon his exile to England he insisted people did so, as he was now thouroughly english and not in the least frenchy.  If anyone else has heard this, then I think it should go into the article (but it smacks just a bit of the kind of nonsense maths lecturers come up with in order to break the tedium, so I'm not putting it in myself). -- Finlay McWalter |  Talk 19:54, 1 Apr 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Pronunciation of name

message: This article was automatically  assessed because at least one article was rated and this bot brought all the other ratings up to at least that level. BetacommandBot 02:05, 27 August 2007 (
De Moivre was a good friend of Isaac Newton.  He calculated when he would die.  He slept fifteen minutes longer each day, and said that the day he slept 24 hours he would die, and his prediction was correct.
Too long day
On April 21, 2009, the information about how he had calculated the day when he would die was changed into "1.5 minutes per day" plus the info that he did it when he was 42. As he died when he was 87, this would give 1.5 * ((87-42) * 365 + 12)/60 = 410.925 hours in a 24-hour day. I added 12 for leap years, but even without it it would be definitely too much. So when did he exactly predict it and how many minutes per day was it? Could anybody help correct it please?  --C. Trifle (talk) 16:00, 27 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  WikiProject class rating

message: Can anyone find an accurate source for his prediction of death?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hmyt (talk • contribs) 19:56, 31 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Death Prediction 

message: for some reason Wikipedia lists Abraham de Moivre on the "List of amateur mathematicians." The description is "people whose primary vocation did not involve mathematics (or any similar discipline) yet made notable, and sometimes important, contributions to the field of mathematics." After reading this page, I would debate de Moivre's inclusion on this list; he certainly seemed to be involved with mathematics as his primary vocation. Owen214 (talk) 06:59, 8 August 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  amateur mathematician 

message: The attribution of the normal distribution to de Moivre is not quite correct. I think this needs expanding upon. De Moivre found a large sample approximation to binomial probabilities in terms of what we now know as a normal distribution. However, he was only interested in discrete distributions and did not think of his formula as a probability distribution in its own right. For this reason he is not usually credited with the discovery of the normal distribution.TerryM--re (talk) 04:30, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Probability 

message: Hello fellow Wikipedians,
I have just modified  on Abraham de Moivre. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
*Corrected formatting/usage for http://euler.ciens.ucv.ve/English/mathematics/demoivre.html
*Added  tag to http://archimede.mat.ulaval.ca/pages/genest/publi/StatSci-2007.pdf
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080511213224/http://press.princeton.edu/books/maor/sidebar_e.pdf to http://press.princeton.edu/books/maor/sidebar_e.pdf
When you have finished reviewing my changes, please set the checked parameter below to true or failed to let others know (documentation at ).
Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 23:18, 2 October 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: At present the section that's titled "Stirling's approximation" states: "Stirling's formula was first discovered and proven by de Moivre … "  That claim is wrong.  "Stirling's approximation" was first conceived in 1730 by the Scottish mathematician James Stirling (1692–1770).  
De Moivre had been studying probability, and his investigations required him to calculate binomial coefficients, which in turn required him to calculate factorials.  In 1730 de Moivre published his book Miscellanea Analytica … , and on pages 103–104 of that book were tables of log (N!).  A few days after the book's publication, de Moivre received a letter from Stirling stating that there were errors in the tables.  Furthermore, Stirling included a series for calculating log (N!) — although he didn't include a proof that the series was correct.  Stirling's series also contained the factor log ( ).  De Moivre soon derived his own series for log (N!), which was similar to Stirling's series.
Later in 1730 Stirling published his book Methodus Differentialis … , in which he included his series for log (N!).
Meanwhile, also in 1730, de Moivre had an appendix or Supplementum added to his book, which included quotes from Stirling's letter, Stirling's series for log (N!), and de Moivre's own series for log (N!).  When de Moivre published in 1756 the fourth edition of his book Doctrine of Chances, he again credited Stirling with finding a series for log (N!).  
Thus, although later authors have misattributed Stirling's approximation, de Moivre himself repeatedly and explicitly credited Stirling.
Sources documenting Stirling's priority include:
* Jacques Gélinas (2017) "Original proofs of Stirling's series for log (N!)"
* Isaac Todhunter (1865) A History of the Mathematical Theory of Probability from the Time of Pascal to That of Laplace
VexorAbVikipædia (talk) 03:03, 10 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stirling's approximation 

message: I have read in various places that de Moivre proved the first case of the central limit theorem for what we would now call a Bernoulli random variable. That is, if a coin landing heads with probability p in (0, 1) and tails with probabiity 1-p is flipped repeatedly, independently, then Let H(n) denote the number of heads. 
the probability that the standardized number SH(n) of heads after n flips lies in the interval [A, B] is asymptotic to the integral of the standard normal density 
d(x) = (1/√(2π)) * exp(-x2/2) 
over the interval [A, B], where the standardized number of heads SH(n) is defined as
SH(n)  =  (H(n)-𝜇n) / 𝜎n
where the mean 𝜇n = np and the standard deviation 𝜎n = √(n p (1-p)). 
This was an extremely important development in probability theory, and I am very surprised not to see it mentioned in the article. 2601:200:C000:1A0:B844:D24:C76:F0D6 (talk) 00:57, 13 July 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  What about de Moivre's central limit theorem for Bernoulli random variables? 

message: The section on De Moivre's formula just has so many problems. Particular roots need to be taken to get the result. And De Moivre's formula#Failure for non-integer powers, and generalization says the opposite about it being true for all real n. I haven't the foggiest how to reframe the section so it is correct. NadVolum (talk) 09:42, 6 November 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  De Moivre's formula