What did the French mathematician Abraham de Moivre calculate for himself?

Abraham de Moivre (26 May 1667 – 27 November 1754) was a French mathematician known for de Moivre's formula, a formula that links complex numbers and trigonometry, and for his work on the normal distribution and probability theory.

He moved to England at a young age due to the religious persecution of Huguenots in France which began in 1685. He was a friend of Isaac Newton, Edmond Halley, and James Stirling.

De Moivre wrote a book on probability theory, "The Doctrine of Chances", said to have been prized by gamblers. De Moivre first discovered Binet's formula, the closed-form expression for Fibonacci numbers. He also was the first to postulate the central limit theorem, a cornerstone of probability theory.

As he grew older, he became increasingly lethargic and needed longer sleeping hours. A common, though disputable, claim is that he noted he was sleeping an extra 15 minutes each night and correctly calculated the date of his death as the day when the sleep time reached 24 hours, 27 November 1754. On that day he did in fact die, in London.

More Info: en.wikipedia.org

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17 Comments

Julie Domaille

Very disciplined to sleep same amount of time plus 15. If I were to calculate that way, I probably died years ago, just forgot to lie down

Nev Brown

Was his prediction a self-fulfilled prophecy,because he took his own life?

Player

Math can be morbid.

Cheryl Love

Nev Brown, he did not die by suicide, but “fatigue”. He had numerous health issues and toward the end of his life was sleeping over 20 hours per day.

Cheryl Love

Although the only answer which made sense (and a typical Lilly question), there is no basis in fact regarding De Moivre’s alleged prediction of his death: “The story, passed on as an interesting fiction by several writers, has some basis in fact, but the arithmetic progression and De Moivre's prophetic statement are purely apocryphal, and are not to be found in any of the accounts written by men living at the time of his death.”

Jon Woolery

That’s the dead-last thing I want to calculate.

earlepg

Tammi Brass, True, but one usually has to figure out a goal before envisioning a way to reach it.

Tammi Brass

earlepg, yes, but first he had to figure it out to even do that in the first place, at least that's the way I see it 🤷‍♀️

earlepg

This feat wasn't so difficult if all he had to do was either a simple (though lengthy) process of adding 15 minutes for each day left to reach the 24 hour total or (for him) quick and easy calculation of finding the number of days needed to reach 24 hours starting from the current day.