 A significant indirect influence was Thomas Simpson , who achieved a result that closely resembled de Moivre 's . According to Simpsons ' work 's preface , his own work depended greatly on de Moivre 's ; the latter in fact described Simpson 's work as an abridged version of his own . Finally , Thomas Bayes wrote an essay discussing theological implications of de Moivre 's results : his solution to a problem , namely that of determining the probability of an event by its relative frequency , was taken as a proof for the existence of God by Bayes . Finally in 1812 , Pierre @-@ Simon Laplace published his Théorie analytique des probabilités in which he consolidated and laid down many fundamental results in probability and statistics such as the moment generating function , method of least squares , inductive probability , and hypothesis testing , thus completing the final phase in the development of classical probability . Indeed , in light of all this , there is good reason Bernoulli 's work is hailed as such a seminal event ; not only did his various influences , direct and indirect , set the mathematical study of combinatorics spinning , but even theology was impacted . 
