 Pierre <unk> de Montmort , in collaboration with Nicolaus Bernoulli , wrote a book on probability Essay d <unk> sur les <unk> de hazard which appeared in 1708 , which can be seen as an extension of the Part III of Ars Conjectandi which applies combinatorics and probability to analyze games of chance commonly played at that time . Abraham de Moivre also wrote extensively on the subject in De <unk> <unk> : Seu de <unk> <unk> in <unk> a <unk> <unk> <unk> of 1711 and its extension The Doctrine of Chances or , a Method of Calculating the Probability of Events in Play of 1718 . De Moivre 's most notable achievement in probability was the discovery of the first instance of central limit theorem , by which he was able to approximate the binomial distribution with the normal distribution . To achieve this De Moivre developed an asymptotic sequence for the factorial function — - which we now refer to as Stirling 's approximation — - and Bernoulli 's formula for the sum of powers of numbers . Both Montmort and de Moivre adopted the term probability from Jacob Bernoulli , which had not been used in all the previous publications on gambling , and both their works were enormously popular . 
