indifference, in the mathematical theory of probability, a classical principle stated by the Swiss mathematician Jakob Bernoulli and formulated (and named) by the English economist John Maynard Keynes in A Treatise on Probability (1921): two cases are equally likely if no reason is known why either case should be the preferable one. The assumption of indifference was frequently used by the French mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace beginning in the 1780s to calculate “inverse” or, as we now say, Bayesian probabilities. Such assumptions became controversial in the 19th century. Keynes and his followers worked to define the conditions under which they are justified.