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Giovanni Francesco Peverone

b. Cuneo, Piedmont


Very little is known of the life of Peverone. 

Peverone lived during the sixteenth century. His work, Due Brevi e Facili Trattati, il Primo d'Arithmetica, l'Altro di Geometria (Two Brief and Easy Treatises, the First on Arithmetic, the Other on Geometry), published in 1558, contains the two examples given by Cardano in his Chapter LXI, Section 14, but without attribution. He has suppressed the important phrase (Ratio autem demonstrativa ...) where Cardan formulated the basis of his method. In so doing, he has demonstrated that he has not understood what was better stated in the text he was copying.

Nonetheless, these problems from the Trattati are presented in Italian and English in facing columns.

David Eugene Smith provided an opinion of his work in his Rara Arithmetica: "This is in no sense a scholarly production." On the other hand, Maurice Kendall in the article "The beginning of a probability calculus" (Biometrika 43 pp. 1-14)  calls this one of the nearest misses in mathematics.