Randomness

by Deborah J. Bennett

From the ancients' first readings of the innards of birds to your neighbor's last bout with the state lottery, humankind has put itself into the hands of chance. Today life itself may be at stake when probability comes into play--in the chance of a false negative in a medical test, in the reliability of DNA findings as legal evidence, or in the likelihood of passing on a deadly congenital disease--yet as few people as ever understand the odds. This book is aimed at the trouble with trying to learn about probability. A story of the misconceptions and difficulties civilization overcame in progressing toward probabilistic thinking, Randomness is also a skillful account of what makes the science of probability so daunting in our own day.

To acquire a (correct) intuition of chance is not easy to begin with, and moving from an intuitive sense to a formal notion of probability presents further problems. Author Deborah Bennett traces the path this process takes in an individual trying to come to grips with concepts of uncertainty and fairness, and also charts the parallel path by which societies have developed ideas about chance. Why, from ancient to modern times, have people resorted to chance in making decisions? Is a decision made by random choice "fair"? What role has gambling played in our understanding of chance? Why do some individuals and societies refuse to accept randomness at all? If understanding randomness is so important to probabilistic thinking, why do the experts disagree about what it really is? And why are our intuitions about chance almost always dead wrong?

Anyone who has puzzled over a probability conundrum is struck by the paradoxes and counterintuitive results that occur at a relatively simple level. Why this should be, and how it has been the case through the ages, for bumblers and brilliant mathematicians alike, is the entertaining and enlightening lesson of Randomness.

Genres: Nonfiction, Mathematics, Science, History, Finance, Philosophy

238 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[Sheila M.]

This was a surprising historical look at probability and why probability is so difficult for humans to understand (because we rely on our intuition which in the arena of probability is often wrong). The author writes this well and I came away with an appreciation about how long it took humanity to recognize randomness and chance.

[Jesse Ofner · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought it was a very good high level on both the different aspects of randomness with some quality history on the study of it. It’s not a deep dive but the notes contain good content for getting more details and what thinkers to investigate.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought the book was OK. My understanding of randomness is not OK. Why is math so hard for me. I enjoyed reading about the history of Randomness.

[Dawith · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a fun summary of history of how human understanding around probability and chance developed

[Stewart · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was hoping for more discussion of the philosophy of randomness and how randomness influences, in fact, dominates our lives. However, this short book was more about the mathematics of chance: a brief history of gambling, the bell curve, and the chance of two persons in a group of 25 people having the same birthday (about 50-50), etc., material I already knew.
However, author Deborah Bennett poses one interesting question: Is a situation or event random because of our ignorance of its contributing factors or are the causes of a random situation unknowable. For example, any single toss of a coin is considered a random event. But if someone could determine all the properties of the coin and construct a mechanical hand that tosses it exactly the same all the time, plus he had complete knowledge of the wind conditions, etc., could he predict the outcome of each toss 100 percent of the time? It might take weeks or months to acquire this knowledge, making it unlikely anyone would attempt this experiment.
Some events, formerly seen as completely random, are now less so, for instance, weather forecasting. One hundred years ago and more, the weather was considered random (except in a general way the change of seasons). Now, with weather satellites, radar, and computers, we much better understand the patterns of weather and can predict with high probability the next day or so the weather at a certain place.
Putting this question aside, for the vast majority of humans, life has a high degree of randomness, although less than the worlds of 1,000 years ago or 10,000 years ago. We walk out the door of our house or apartment every day mixing into our world, seeing people, objects, and events that are largely random and uncertain. Life is a fluctuation of surprises.

[JP · Rating 3 out of 5]

A concise and interesting history. I like the emphasis on differentiating random sequence from randomn generation and the important of looking at the practical need. For example, a series of like numbers are totally expected in a long series but may be undesirable for small samples. Many applications really need some basis of disorder. The comprehensive history includes the eventual agreement that both e and pi contain a seemingly random sequence of digits.

[Fredrik · Rating 2 out of 5]

chances are that an arbitrary book is funnier than this one. more of a history book than a food-for-though piece on randomness; i expected more.