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Chances Are . . .: Adventures in Probability
A compelling journey through history, mathematics, and philosophy, charting humanity’s struggle against randomness Our lives are played out in the arena of chance. However little we recognize it in our day-to-day existence, we are always riding the odds, seeking out certainty but settling—reluctantly—for likelihood, building our beliefs on the shadowy props of probability. Chances Are is the story of man’s millennia-long search for the tools to manage the recurrent but unpredictable—to help us prevent, or at least mitigate, the seemingly random blows of disaster, disease, and injustice. In these pages, we meet the brilliant individuals who developed the first abstract formulations of probability, as well as the intrepid visionaries who recognized their practical applications—from gamblers to military strategists to meteorologists to medical researchers, from blackjack to our own mortality.
336 pages, Paperback
First published February 26, 2003
52 people are currently reading
726 people want to read
About the author
Michael Kaplan
87 books9 followersMichael Kaplan is a writer and filmmaker. He holds an undergraduate and Master's degrees in History from Harvard University. He finished graduate studies at the University of Oxford.
He is the co-author alongside his mother, Ellen Kaplan, of the Bozo Sapiens Why to Err Is Human and Chances Are... Adventures in Probability.
He is currenlt a managing partner of Prospero, (a communications company with government and corporate clients in North America, Europe and Asia).
He is the co-author alongside his mother, Ellen Kaplan, of the Bozo Sapiens Why to Err Is Human and Chances Are... Adventures in Probability.
He is currenlt a managing partner of Prospero, (a communications company with government and corporate clients in North America, Europe and Asia).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 46 reviews
July 12, 2017
This book provides a tour through the world of chance and the role it plays in our lives and in the known history of the universe. Probability can be expressed in mathematical and philosophical terms, and this book reviews those concepts but quickly moves on to easily understood discussion of the material.
We are surrounded in a life of probabilities which usually goes unnoticed until reminded by a book such as this. Even non-mathemeticans are participants in this game whether crossing the street to investing in the stock market. We buy insurance without a second thought about the extent to which the whole insurance industry is built of probabilities.
And then there's the weather. On the subject of weather, it would be a lot more helpful if the weather forecast simply told us if it was going to rain. Instead they give of the chances of rain which leaves plenty of uncertainty regarding planning outdoor events.
Gambling is an interesting juxtaposition of probabilities and human intuition. In case you're wondering, intuition is the loser in this match. Here's one thing I didn't know before—The 52 ! (= 8.06581752 x 10^67) permutations of a deck of cards, if well shuffled, is so large that there is no reason to expect that a pack of cards is in the same order as any other order that has ever been randomly shuffled and dealt in the entire history of card playing.
The form in which probability is presented to the public can determine the way in which it is perceived. An example of this presented in the book is as follows:
In the following excerpt taken from the end of the book, the authors explain that to be human is a struggle against randomness, and an understanding of probability is our best weapon for reducing randomness down to manageable reality.
We are surrounded in a life of probabilities which usually goes unnoticed until reminded by a book such as this. Even non-mathemeticans are participants in this game whether crossing the street to investing in the stock market. We buy insurance without a second thought about the extent to which the whole insurance industry is built of probabilities.
And then there's the weather. On the subject of weather, it would be a lot more helpful if the weather forecast simply told us if it was going to rain. Instead they give of the chances of rain which leaves plenty of uncertainty regarding planning outdoor events.
Gambling is an interesting juxtaposition of probabilities and human intuition. In case you're wondering, intuition is the loser in this match. Here's one thing I didn't know before—The 52 ! (= 8.06581752 x 10^67) permutations of a deck of cards, if well shuffled, is so large that there is no reason to expect that a pack of cards is in the same order as any other order that has ever been randomly shuffled and dealt in the entire history of card playing.
The form in which probability is presented to the public can determine the way in which it is perceived. An example of this presented in the book is as follows:
… doctors and hospital administrators were asked to grade four cancer-screening programs. Program A reduced the death rate by 34 percent, Program B produced an absolute reduction in deaths of 0.06 percent, and Program C increased the patient survival rate from 99.82 percent to 99.88 percent. Under Program D, 1,592 patients would have to be screened to prevent one death. The doctors and administrators strongly recommended Program A, but, in fact, the four sets of numbers describe the same program.It's amazing how theological the subject of probability can be. Probability encroaches into the realm of occurances traditionally attributed to God's will. Some have suggested that mathematics, including the mathematics of probability, existed before the universe was created. In other words, mathematical truth is more enduring than atoms and photons. (Sounds like God to me.)
In the following excerpt taken from the end of the book, the authors explain that to be human is a struggle against randomness, and an understanding of probability is our best weapon for reducing randomness down to manageable reality.
Just as probability shows there are infinite degrees of belief between the impossible and the certain, there are degrees of fulfillment in this task of being human. If you want a trustworthy distinction between body and soul, it might be this; our bodies, like all life forms, are essentially entropy machines. We exist by flattening out energy gradients, absorbing concentrations of value, and dissipating them in motion, heat, noise, and waste. Our souls, though, swim upstream, struggling against entropy's current. Every neuron, every cell, contains an equivalent of Maxwell's demon—the ion channels—which sort and separate, increasing local useful structure. We use that structure for more than simply assessing and acting, like mindless automata. We remember and anticipate, speculate and explain. We tell stories and jokes—the best of which could be described as tickling our sense of probabilities.
This is our fate and our duty; to search for, devise, and create the less probable, the lower-entropy state—to connect, build, describe, preserve, extend ... to strive and not to yield. We reason, and examine our reasoning, not because we will ever achieve certainty, but because some forms of un- certainty are better than others. Better explanations have more meaning, wider use, less entropy.
And in doing all this, we must be brave—because, in a world of probability, there are no universal rules to hide behind. Because fortune favors the brave; the prepared mind robs fate of half its terrors. And because each judgment, each decision we make, if made well, is part of the broader, essential human quest; the endless struggle against randomness.
April 19, 2018
This book struck my personal resonant frequency. I found the anecdotes witty and engaging, the conclusions often insightful, and the underlying premise -- that life can best be appreciated as a motley collection of random events, the shape of which can be estimated with varying degrees of confidence but not quantified with certainty… and that anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something -- fully in line with my own philosophy. It further preached to this particular choir member by referencing a number of anecdotes and authors that I had previously come across and enjoyed (most notably Gerd Gigerenzer's discussion of doctors and breast cancer in Calculated Risks, which dramatically illustrates how use of frequencies -- out of 1,000 women between the ages of 40 and 50, 8 will have breast cancer, etc., leading up to a demonstration that the likelihood of a woman in her 40s having breast cancer is actually only 1 in 10 -- is intuitively easier to grasp for both patients and doctors). To reduce the risk that my rave of this work has more to do with my own idiosyncracies than the book's underlying merits, I'm going to let the authors speak for themselves.. You may draw your own conclusions, and I will butt back in at the end.
On combinatorics and certainty (p. 11): "[C]an you devise a machine that encompasses (or, at the very least, names) all that might happen?… The question remains 'How right do you need to be?' -- and there are large areas of life where we may not yet be right enough…. Einstein famously remarked that he did not believe God would play dice with the universe. The probabilistic reply is that perhaps the universe is playing dice with God."
On fate (pp. 38-39): "DeMoivre saw God revealed in the pattern of randomness… banished… by Descartes, Divinity returns in the unepected mathematical perfection of chance events. The bell curve shows the trace of an almighty hand -- though, of course, particular cases can lie well off the midpoint. DeMoivre himself was just such an outlier. He gained little from his genius; even his curves are now named for Gauss and Poisson. He was always a bit too much or too little for the world he lived in, but his own series at last converged at the age of eighty-seven. According to the story, having noticed that he was sleeping a little longer every day, he predicted the day when he would never awake… and on that day he died, as the bill of death put it, of 'somnolence.'"
On scientific mistrust (pp. 146-7): "[A point about] the dismal reputation of statistics: that dry and empty sensation in the stomach's core when the subject arises, either in assignment or in conversation. Any newspaper reader would be able to make sense of one of Galton's essays, but Pearson carried statistics off into a mathematical thicket that has obscured it ever since. He was a scientist and wrote for scientists -- but this meant that the ultimate tool of science, its measure of certainty, became something the rest of us had to take on trust. Now that the calculation is further entombed, deep within the software that generates statistical analyses, it becomes even more like the pronouncement of an oracle: the adepts may interpret, but we in the congregation can only raise our hands and wonder."
On the origins of modern law (p. 181): "Each element of [Justinian's Digest] was derived from a Roman legacy, but the spirit of it -- its subtlety, proliferation of terms, and artificiality -- was entirely medieval. Corals of interpretation grew over the rock of law, and their effect was to move questions of likelihood and credibility from rhetoric into textual analysis. It was no longer the audience in the forum [sic] that would decide if an interpretation was likely; it was the skilled professional with a degree. Justinian had intended to give the world law; unintentionally, he gave it lawyers."
On chaos ad absurdam (p. 221): "[Iteration] forbids prediction…. Tell me how precise you want to be, and I can introduce my little germ of instability one decimal place farther along; it may take a few more repetitions before the whole system's state becomes unpredictable, but the inevitability of chaos remains. The conventional image has the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil causing a storm in China, but even this is a needlessly gross impetus. The physicist David Ruelle, a major figure in chaos theory, gives a convincing demonstration that suspending the gravitational effect on our atmosphere of one electron at the limit of the observable universe would take no more than two weeks to make a difference in Earth's weather equivalent to having rain rather than sun during a romantic picnic."
On war (pp. 258-9): "Trying to figure your chances so far into the future may convince you that 'you can't get there from here': you may miss the most desirable payoff and choose an initial strategy that eventually goes against your interests -- acting, in error, like an irrational player…. [Take the origins of WWI, for example.] 'Ah, well,' said Jovanovic, [Serbia's public information minister in 1914] , 'I suppose there's nothing to do but die fighting.' Of course there was an alternative -- it simply was too painful to consider. For these beleaguered [Serbo-Croat] ministers, it seemed more rational to set the fatal machine [of European alliances] in motion than to submit [to Austria's demands.] Linked mobilizations went ahead across Europe. Within three days, Russia, Germany and France were officially at war. At one moment Kaiser Wilhelm lost his nerve and tried to halt the relentless plan -- but his commanding general explained, in tears, that the train schedule was too complex to meddle with now. The Gernam Chancellor Bethman-Hollweg prayed: 'When the iron dice roll, may God help us.' But God refused to play; instead, the millions fell beneath the trembling hand."
On the frailty of knowledge (p. 299): "We have pursued truth through a labyrinth and come up against a mirror. It turns out that things seem uncertain to us because certainty is a quality not of things but of ideas. Things seem to have particular ways of being or happening because that is how we see and sort experience…"
I have two last comments. First, it should be evident from the selected passages that Michael and Ellen Kaplan (the father-daughter authorial team) make heavy use of irony and contrast to make their points. Second, if this did not come across from the examples I provided, I should clarify that the Kaplans don't present a fatalist, pessimistic world view. Rather, through repeated exploration of the implications of a world with infinite variation and tentative (in terms of reliability) underlying logic, they propose humility, curiosity, and wonder. It seems to me profoundly sensible and exquisitely ironic that their thoroughly rational, agnostic analysis should share a major conclusion of theism. But I think they would argue that that's simply what comes of being human.
On combinatorics and certainty (p. 11): "[C]an you devise a machine that encompasses (or, at the very least, names) all that might happen?… The question remains 'How right do you need to be?' -- and there are large areas of life where we may not yet be right enough…. Einstein famously remarked that he did not believe God would play dice with the universe. The probabilistic reply is that perhaps the universe is playing dice with God."
On fate (pp. 38-39): "DeMoivre saw God revealed in the pattern of randomness… banished… by Descartes, Divinity returns in the unepected mathematical perfection of chance events. The bell curve shows the trace of an almighty hand -- though, of course, particular cases can lie well off the midpoint. DeMoivre himself was just such an outlier. He gained little from his genius; even his curves are now named for Gauss and Poisson. He was always a bit too much or too little for the world he lived in, but his own series at last converged at the age of eighty-seven. According to the story, having noticed that he was sleeping a little longer every day, he predicted the day when he would never awake… and on that day he died, as the bill of death put it, of 'somnolence.'"
On scientific mistrust (pp. 146-7): "[A point about] the dismal reputation of statistics: that dry and empty sensation in the stomach's core when the subject arises, either in assignment or in conversation. Any newspaper reader would be able to make sense of one of Galton's essays, but Pearson carried statistics off into a mathematical thicket that has obscured it ever since. He was a scientist and wrote for scientists -- but this meant that the ultimate tool of science, its measure of certainty, became something the rest of us had to take on trust. Now that the calculation is further entombed, deep within the software that generates statistical analyses, it becomes even more like the pronouncement of an oracle: the adepts may interpret, but we in the congregation can only raise our hands and wonder."
On the origins of modern law (p. 181): "Each element of [Justinian's Digest] was derived from a Roman legacy, but the spirit of it -- its subtlety, proliferation of terms, and artificiality -- was entirely medieval. Corals of interpretation grew over the rock of law, and their effect was to move questions of likelihood and credibility from rhetoric into textual analysis. It was no longer the audience in the forum [sic] that would decide if an interpretation was likely; it was the skilled professional with a degree. Justinian had intended to give the world law; unintentionally, he gave it lawyers."
On chaos ad absurdam (p. 221): "[Iteration] forbids prediction…. Tell me how precise you want to be, and I can introduce my little germ of instability one decimal place farther along; it may take a few more repetitions before the whole system's state becomes unpredictable, but the inevitability of chaos remains. The conventional image has the flap of a butterfly's wings in Brazil causing a storm in China, but even this is a needlessly gross impetus. The physicist David Ruelle, a major figure in chaos theory, gives a convincing demonstration that suspending the gravitational effect on our atmosphere of one electron at the limit of the observable universe would take no more than two weeks to make a difference in Earth's weather equivalent to having rain rather than sun during a romantic picnic."
On war (pp. 258-9): "Trying to figure your chances so far into the future may convince you that 'you can't get there from here': you may miss the most desirable payoff and choose an initial strategy that eventually goes against your interests -- acting, in error, like an irrational player…. [Take the origins of WWI, for example.] 'Ah, well,' said Jovanovic, [Serbia's public information minister in 1914] , 'I suppose there's nothing to do but die fighting.' Of course there was an alternative -- it simply was too painful to consider. For these beleaguered [Serbo-Croat] ministers, it seemed more rational to set the fatal machine [of European alliances] in motion than to submit [to Austria's demands.] Linked mobilizations went ahead across Europe. Within three days, Russia, Germany and France were officially at war. At one moment Kaiser Wilhelm lost his nerve and tried to halt the relentless plan -- but his commanding general explained, in tears, that the train schedule was too complex to meddle with now. The Gernam Chancellor Bethman-Hollweg prayed: 'When the iron dice roll, may God help us.' But God refused to play; instead, the millions fell beneath the trembling hand."
On the frailty of knowledge (p. 299): "We have pursued truth through a labyrinth and come up against a mirror. It turns out that things seem uncertain to us because certainty is a quality not of things but of ideas. Things seem to have particular ways of being or happening because that is how we see and sort experience…"
I have two last comments. First, it should be evident from the selected passages that Michael and Ellen Kaplan (the father-daughter authorial team) make heavy use of irony and contrast to make their points. Second, if this did not come across from the examples I provided, I should clarify that the Kaplans don't present a fatalist, pessimistic world view. Rather, through repeated exploration of the implications of a world with infinite variation and tentative (in terms of reliability) underlying logic, they propose humility, curiosity, and wonder. It seems to me profoundly sensible and exquisitely ironic that their thoroughly rational, agnostic analysis should share a major conclusion of theism. But I think they would argue that that's simply what comes of being human.
June 5, 2015
Like every other book about probability, it starts off with gambling and some historical anecdotes about famous European (usually French) mathematicians. And don't get me wrong -- that's a nice classic approach for a reason. But at the end, it was taking the role of probability in mixed strategy game theory and talking about how it applied to war -- and not just the prisoner's dilemma of the Cold War (with stark choices around defection or cooperation), although it did mention that -- but it also focused on Napoleonic-era strategy and tactics, and the rise of war games in the Prussian General Staff. Mix in weather theory and some stark contemplation of chaos theory, and this went in fun directions.
May 18, 2011
Few of us have a good grasp of probability, as the good ol' Monty Hall problem illustrates (which is interesting, because that problem isn't covered in this book). This is a very approachable book requiring little math skill, although there are a few sections with symbology that might look scary to the uninitiated. Looks are deceiving. It's pussycat stuff. The reader is rewarded with a better awareness of the subject, which should be helpful when analyzing choices or evaluating the statements of others.
April 10, 2025
Warning: This book contains some crazy complicated math. At certain points, I asked myself: Why do I make my life so difficult? Ha. That said, you can get the benefit of this amazing, brilliant book even if you gloss over the mathy bits. Each chapter examines a different aspect of life that can be elucidated with a clearer understanding of probability. Since every aspect of life is unpredictable, that means basically everything. I work with statistics every day, so I expected much of this to be old news to me. I was happy to be proven wrong - 90% of this was fresh, challenging and counterintuitive. This book did what I want a book to d0 - it expanded my view of the world, and it made me appreciate its complexity even more.
July 18, 2025
One of the best books I have ever read. Brilliant, incisive, thoughtful, challenging. Combining mathematics-especially statistics and probability - with history and philosophy this is a treasure which if read with an open mind leads to self reflection and reconsideration of retrenched assumptions and values. Using examples from the human condition anchored into mathematical thought and process it sheds light not only in our condition but how we got here. Most importantly and interesting to me, it also addresses the process of how different mathematical thought developed and what paths were left abandoned and unexplored. For those Asimov fans of The Foundation series, you will find nascent echoes of the possibility of psychohistory here, which delighted me no end.
August 13, 2017
I would've given it five stars, but if the focus is on giving information, then why does the paperback have no bibliography? It just seems ridiculous to state things but give no backup for those of us who like reading where the facts came from. Otherwise, it is authoritatively and even lyrically written and I am glad I bought and read it.
January 11, 2024
Page 61: "There are always stories to support the idea of experience as locally wrinkled although globally smooth. William Nelson Darnborough, Bloomington, Illinois' luckiest if not most famous son, bet on 5 and won on five successive spins of the wheel in 1911."
My grandfather. Thank you, Michael and Ellen Kaplan for including him.
My grandfather. Thank you, Michael and Ellen Kaplan for including him.
November 27, 2024
The coverage of the application of probability in different fields is broad and in depth, some fields unexpected, such as justice and military strategy and tactics. However, game theory definitely leaves a bad taste mainly due to its influences in economics. It takes some efforts to digest the materials.
May 31, 2018
Reading this out of my curiosity on how the world can be interpreted by probabilities and statistics. Interesting narrative, but it didn't get on to me. Will give it another try in the future, but this time I can't finish.
March 1, 2017
I enjoyed the book. It was sometimes a little long, but most of the stories were good. I will say, though, that there were a few too many biblical references in a book on probability for my taste.
July 1, 2024
12.10.08
I read until p. 222
Excellent
I read until p. 222
Excellent
November 18, 2025
Interesting topics but it gets kind of turgid at times.
November 8, 2007
This is a great over view of probability and the fall out that it caused, both in the math and in the wider world.
What it is not too good at is presenting the math itself. The authors seem shy of laying out a formula with a description of what it means. This might just be the endemic fear of publishers on the effects of an equation to diminish book sales - but if that's the case what kind of demographic picks up a book about pop-math, finds an equation in it, and then thinks better of it?
Another thing the book doesn't have is a refernce section. Now this isn't strictly necessary .. . except when the authors make certain interpretations or vague gestures to other studies and findings. I know, it might make it seem a bit too text-booky, but it would have been nice to see at least a "Further Reading" section.
What it is not too good at is presenting the math itself. The authors seem shy of laying out a formula with a description of what it means. This might just be the endemic fear of publishers on the effects of an equation to diminish book sales - but if that's the case what kind of demographic picks up a book about pop-math, finds an equation in it, and then thinks better of it?
Another thing the book doesn't have is a refernce section. Now this isn't strictly necessary .. . except when the authors make certain interpretations or vague gestures to other studies and findings. I know, it might make it seem a bit too text-booky, but it would have been nice to see at least a "Further Reading" section.
January 3, 2016
Nice and easy historical read on the topic of probability and statistics, written by two non-technical historians. The book is about the people and situations that brought these two topics to the forefront of science (and almost everything else) over the years. The terminology is often loose or bordering on wrong (technically speaking), but as a casual read it was a wonderful book that fills in many gaps and explained the chronology of these thoughts/discoveries/inventions.
I particularly liked the tidbits about Student's t-test (a statistical metric for those that do not know) coming out of the Guinness Brewery and that many advances came by way of legal and insurance means (e.g., the 0-to-1 range of probability). Overall, the book offers a introduction to the mathematical topics of probability and statistics and possibly a historical background for those already familiar.
I particularly liked the tidbits about Student's t-test (a statistical metric for those that do not know) coming out of the Guinness Brewery and that many advances came by way of legal and insurance means (e.g., the 0-to-1 range of probability). Overall, the book offers a introduction to the mathematical topics of probability and statistics and possibly a historical background for those already familiar.
June 9, 2009
If you ever go gambling, always play the games that pit you against other people. Never play any game that pits you against the house. If you're curious about why this is, then read this book. If not... It's your money. You do whatever you want.
Most math history books talk about who did what when and how. This is the history of Probability and Statistics. It covers a great deal of the why as well as the "what does it really mean?" If you've ever been curious about gambling, insurance, medical research, weather forecasting, forensic evidence or why the United States behaved in an utterly batshit insane manner during the Cold War, then this book is for you.
Most math history books talk about who did what when and how. This is the history of Probability and Statistics. It covers a great deal of the why as well as the "what does it really mean?" If you've ever been curious about gambling, insurance, medical research, weather forecasting, forensic evidence or why the United States behaved in an utterly batshit insane manner during the Cold War, then this book is for you.
December 4, 2010
It took me some time to get into this book, but, once I did it was a very interesting read. The authors take us on a journey of through the progression of the development of probability. We being with a few chapters on the great thinkers who created modern probability. The authors then show us how probability has been used in all facets of life - from sociology, gambling, war, medicine, insurance, law, and weather forecasting.
The authors have a very dense writing style, and the inclusion of all the probability terms and theory doesn't make it any easier. However, the insight into the basis of much of my graduate studies was fascinating.
The authors have a very dense writing style, and the inclusion of all the probability terms and theory doesn't make it any easier. However, the insight into the basis of much of my graduate studies was fascinating.
March 24, 2012
I really enjoyed this book. Not only does "Chances Are" entertain it also surprises with interesting facts. My favourite lines quote the work of Joseph de Maistre, who was influential in Leo Tolstoy's epic "War and Peace".
“On a vast terrain covered with all the tools of carnage, that seems to crumble under the tread of men and horses; in the middle of fire and swirls of smoke . . . People will say gravely to you: “How can you not know what happened in the fight, since you were there?”— where often one could say precisely the contrary."
That's how I used to feel every day after work.
“On a vast terrain covered with all the tools of carnage, that seems to crumble under the tread of men and horses; in the middle of fire and swirls of smoke . . . People will say gravely to you: “How can you not know what happened in the fight, since you were there?”— where often one could say precisely the contrary."
That's how I used to feel every day after work.
January 16, 2016
More or less a history of probability, statistics & their applications, starting with dice games and roulette. Figuring out games of chance led to the first studies of probability. Later sections deal w/ various applications such as the development of the insurance industry, medicine (including why it's so difficult to conduct clinical trials of experimental medicines, war and life in general. This isn't the type of book I would normally select in a library or book store (it was a gift) but the authors' style makes it pretty interesting.
If you want to establish or bolster your geek credibility, this is a good start.
If you want to establish or bolster your geek credibility, this is a good start.
May 1, 2008
I really liked this book. This is the best book on the elusive yet quantifiable nature of Probability. The authors, a son and mother team, tie in history, vignettes of the personalities involved in progressing our understanding of this branch of knowledge. The book is jam packed with history, math, and connections to probability in many aspects of life. The authors wander in and out of topics, always tying them to the main topic, and they cover a lot of ground.
I highly recommend this to anyone with any interest in probability and chance.
I highly recommend this to anyone with any interest in probability and chance.
January 11, 2014
This is an entertaining and informative book about the science of randomness. Chapters deal with gambling, war, weather forecasting and other topics, and how they have been created or affected by developments in statistics. All the characters are here, Bayes, Quetelet, Poincare, Pearson and many others. The authors have a breezy style that still details the history of the people and ideas which shaped the progress of understanding of distributions and the random.
If you read A Drunkard's Walk or The Lady Tasting Tea you would probably enjoy this book. Unless you are 3-sigma or something.
If you read A Drunkard's Walk or The Lady Tasting Tea you would probably enjoy this book. Unless you are 3-sigma or something.
August 12, 2013
Your basic pop non-fiction offering wherein the author(s) assume you possess an intellect no greater than that of a 5th grader (who is about to repeat that illustrious grade for the 3rd time mind you). Luckily enough, their underestimation of your intelligence is perfectly countered by the inevitable overestimation of their own cleverness. If you are able to get your mind right, you might get some true enjoyment out of this book. However, realize that the actual information conveyed in this 300 page book would require only a 20 page primer.
September 18, 2007
This is a popular science book about probability and statistics, and of those I’ve read (a few, because the subject interests me a lot), this is the best. It gives just enough history of the subject, explains the centrality of the subject in all modern sciences, and most important, explains various laws of probability very well, including the extremely counterintuitive (for me) Bayes' theorem and the intriguing Parrondo’s Paradox.
Read
July 31, 2009This was engagingly written and very interesting, but the math defeated me.
In fact, I wonder whether they're expecting their audience to understand the math at all (if that's it, then they must be expecting only high school seniors and people smarter than me to read it) or whether they figured we'd all just skim it and go, "Oh, look, a page of equations. That must mean this is all proven."
I'd give this another try at a future date when I have more brain cells to spare.
In fact, I wonder whether they're expecting their audience to understand the math at all (if that's it, then they must be expecting only high school seniors and people smarter than me to read it) or whether they figured we'd all just skim it and go, "Oh, look, a page of equations. That must mean this is all proven."
I'd give this another try at a future date when I have more brain cells to spare.
July 16, 2007
This was a random book that I picked up since, well, I'm a dork and I think stats are cool. The book tries to combine a colorful explanation of statistics, with some interesting history and outcomes, but neither were done terribly well. Also the book often lacks continuity, maybe because it was written by two authors.
September 28, 2007
This book does a nice job of highlighting some of the ways probability effects the world around us. It mixes history, science, and a little bit of philosophy in order to show how different concepts of probabiliy and statistics developed and apply to different fields. The book kept my interest, but the author's writting did not flow well at times.
March 31, 2013
This was a very interesting book that allows non-math types to follow the history of the study of probability. Also, the "Monty Hall" problem caused some long conversations with my more math endowed brother. A great read without battering the right brain too much.
June 9, 2015
Excellent read, full of facts, history, sociology, psychology, math, humor and insight. A little heady on the math up front, but worth sticking with it. I enjoyed the depth of perspective brought to a usually one-dimensional topic.
December 20, 2007
Great little mathematical history of the field of probability and statistics.
June 20, 2008
Thematic essays on probability. I was looking for a gentle refresher on a little bit more than the basics on probability, and was not disappointed.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 46 reviews