Exploration of the Laplace rule in programming R | By Michael Wayne Smith | August 2025

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If we are the same, we like a good tomato in summer. Let’s say that we are going to plant seeds that a friend gave us last year. Instead of digging the whole garden, let’s plant a tomato seed in a pot to see if the tomato seeds are good.

Good news

Our tomato plant pushed and gave birth to tomatoes!

Great! How sure we are the next seed?

This is a perfect question for one of the most useful ideas of mathematics: the Laplace rule.

Pierre-Simon Laplace

Pierre-Simon Laplace (1749–1827) was a member of the French and scientific lights influence his time. Laplace’s work has addressed a range of fields, including mathematics, astronomy, physics and probability.

Laplace is considered one of the founders of modern probability theory. It has formalized many of the concepts we use today, including the theorem of the central limit and what is now known as The Laplace rule of…