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Fluke: The Maths and Myths of Coincidence
Imagine this: you are browsing used books in a bookstore hundreds of miles from home when you come across a copy of Moby Dick, which you remember reading as a child. You open it and find your own name on the inside cover.
What are the chances? This is the question we ask ourselves upon encountering seemingly impossible coincidences, like the woman who won the lottery four times. But from clairvoyants to financial markets, and from unique scientific discoveries to DNA evidence, if there is any likelihood that something could happen, no matter how small, it is bound to happen to someone at some time.
Coupling lively anecdotes with the principles of probability, Joseph Mazur balances the fun of a great coincidence with the logical thinking of a mathematician. With a lightness of touch and a witty turn of phrase, Mazur sweeps aside pseudoscience and conspiracy theories, proving that there are rational explanations for even the most extraordinary events.
What are the chances? This is the question we ask ourselves upon encountering seemingly impossible coincidences, like the woman who won the lottery four times. But from clairvoyants to financial markets, and from unique scientific discoveries to DNA evidence, if there is any likelihood that something could happen, no matter how small, it is bound to happen to someone at some time.
Coupling lively anecdotes with the principles of probability, Joseph Mazur balances the fun of a great coincidence with the logical thinking of a mathematician. With a lightness of touch and a witty turn of phrase, Mazur sweeps aside pseudoscience and conspiracy theories, proving that there are rational explanations for even the most extraordinary events.
272 pages, Paperback
First published March 29, 2016
106 people are currently reading
1433 people want to read
About the author
Joseph Mazur
13 books21 followersJoseph C. Mazur is Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at Marlboro College in Vermont. He earned his Ph.D. in algebraic geometry from MIT and has held visiting positions at MIT and the University of Warwick. A recipient of Guggenheim, Bellagio, and Bogliasco Fellowships, he has written widely on the history and philosophy of mathematics, with books translated into over a dozen languages.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 86 reviews
April 20, 2016
more math and less coincidence than I was looking for.
June 6, 2016
About two-thirds of the way through the book, Mazur seems to run out of things to say about flukes and coincidences. I get the feeling that he rounded up a few previously written essays about marginally related topics, made a half-hearted effort to tie them to his subject, and tacked them on to the end of the book. It didn't ruin the book for me, but I kept waiting to see how he was going to tie everything together -- and when he didn't bother to do that, I was both puzzled and disappointed.
October 4, 2016
This was a neither-here-nor-there book for me: a great deal of math, much of which I didn't understand, and moments that tried to be poetic but didn't really work for me. The subject is an interesting one--most people experience strange coincidences in life--and it was instructive to see how likely any particular fluke might be, when observed through the lens of mathematics. But I've read more useful discussions, particularly involving risk and the chances of something untoward happening.
June 5, 2016
Math professor tries to use probability to illustrate how some unlikely coincidences are not as unlikely as you may think (e.g., there is a 50% chance that 2 people out any random group of 23 people will share the same birthday). While some of the examples are interesting, I think he stretches it a bit thin when he tries to give probabilities to such situations as finding a book one was looking to buy on a subway bench, or having a golden beetle at the window while someone is describing a dream about golden beetles (e.g., assume that there were x copies of the book published that year, y book stores within 2 miles of the subway stop in question, etc. or that the golden beetles come out in June, there are 30 days in June (with x hours of day light (assuming the story was told during the day in June....), then calculate what percentage of that time is 1 hour, etc. )). For those interested, the odds are 1:74,427 and 1:714, 285, respectively, for the above examples.
July 15, 2021
This is pretty thin and Mazur sometimes does that aggravating thing so many people do when they can’t answer a question directly, they move the goalposts and answer something else instead. That said, some of the coincidences and explanations are interesting, so it’s not a total loss, and the stories themselves are entertaining. If this had been longer I would’ve down-rated it, but it doesn’t overstay its welcome.
I was hoping for a book version of the excellent YouTube channel Veritasium, which explores all kinds of cool things to do with science, math and physics. This isn’t that, so go try out some videos there: https://m.youtube.com/c/veritasium
Here’s a short one to get you going, which also applies to the ideas in this book about how we seek patterns due to our cognitive biases: https://youtu.be/vKA4w2O61Xo
I was hoping for a book version of the excellent YouTube channel Veritasium, which explores all kinds of cool things to do with science, math and physics. This isn’t that, so go try out some videos there: https://m.youtube.com/c/veritasium
Here’s a short one to get you going, which also applies to the ideas in this book about how we seek patterns due to our cognitive biases: https://youtu.be/vKA4w2O61Xo
October 23, 2016
tl;dr: Have a large enough sample and even rare things will happen, as such your freak coincidences aren't as unlikely as you think.
That could have been all the book, but instead the reader gets some anecdotes of coincidences, along with combinatorics 101. Unfortunately the book ends up neither here nor there: If you've been to high school and have ever heard of Bernoulli, then the combinatorics-part will bore you (and if you haven't been it might be too formalistic to understand). If you came for the anecdotes you'll find that there are too little of those.
recommended: for people who like to philosophize about coincidences without ever having picked up a book on chance.
That could have been all the book, but instead the reader gets some anecdotes of coincidences, along with combinatorics 101. Unfortunately the book ends up neither here nor there: If you've been to high school and have ever heard of Bernoulli, then the combinatorics-part will bore you (and if you haven't been it might be too formalistic to understand). If you came for the anecdotes you'll find that there are too little of those.
recommended: for people who like to philosophize about coincidences without ever having picked up a book on chance.
February 10, 2024
All the math is sophomoric and the analysis is too simple. I already know Jungian synchronicity is pseudoscience and this book was not necessary to show me that.
October 17, 2016
The main problem is the way that he changes the stories in order to make the math work, for example in the Anthony Hopkins tale the actual coincidence is that a person who knew the author found a specific book that he was looking for and it was specifically owned by a the author, instead he does the math for ANY book being left in any park for someone to find, these include factors that are irrelevant to the story for example any book would include bestsellers that would have a greater chance of being left, for example more James Pattersons would be abandoned than Isaac Asimovs, add in the fact it was published 3 years before and the odds of that particular book being abandoned go up, so in all respects the chance of this book being found are different from the odds of any book being found by someone looking for it.
There are similar problems with each of his examples, he explains in great detail the various coincidences but has too often expanded the tales to the point where they are reliant on items that have no bearing or has done very little research (how often are 4 time lottery winners reported for example).
On the whole a good idea badly executed.
There are similar problems with each of his examples, he explains in great detail the various coincidences but has too often expanded the tales to the point where they are reliant on items that have no bearing or has done very little research (how often are 4 time lottery winners reported for example).
On the whole a good idea badly executed.
June 14, 2016
Meh. The whole point of the book is that coincidences and flukes aren't quite as mathematically unlikely as they seem. That part is true. The book itself is poorly written. I wished for more stories and less vague math talk.
The math was really a waste of time anyway. To someone that knows math well, it added very little. Yet to someone that doesn't know in depth math, I think they'd get totally lost by all the language and notation here. The math sections- which were like half of the book and the whole point really- just seemed like a waste of time.
Interesting topic but poorly conveyed. It's hard to imagine there's not a better version of this book out there. Ultimately disappointing.
The math was really a waste of time anyway. To someone that knows math well, it added very little. Yet to someone that doesn't know in depth math, I think they'd get totally lost by all the language and notation here. The math sections- which were like half of the book and the whole point really- just seemed like a waste of time.
Interesting topic but poorly conveyed. It's hard to imagine there's not a better version of this book out there. Ultimately disappointing.
December 26, 2016
The book has some interesting stories about what is a fluke or what is a coincidence, but it can't decide if it's a math book, a philosophy book, or a literature book. In theory, it's a mathematical look at flukes, but most of the pages are dedicated to telling us what we think are flukes aren't.
I preferred the The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every DayImprobability Principle much more to this one because it set out what kind of book it would be right away and stuck to it.
I preferred the The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every DayImprobability Principle much more to this one because it set out what kind of book it would be right away and stuck to it.
March 19, 2026
I'm tempted to give this book 4 stars because so many of the 3 star reviews are not quite bright. Half the reviewers' brains short circuit at the sight of a few pages of elementary probability theory. One poor thing reported that those pages destroyed their soul. The rest scold the author for using only elementary probability theory, as if most readers studied it within recent memory or can totally recall of its contents decades later, and without a hint of an argument that the subject requires more advanced probability theory.
But the chapter on legal uses of probability theory is so wretchedly bad that I have to downgrade what's otherwise a 4 star book.
Mazur is right that the reliability of DNA forensic evidence has been overstated on the witness stand, but even his corrected probability estimates of a false positive are much higher than the 99.9% certainty implied by his quotation from Maimonides, citing a secondary source, that it's better to let 1,000 innocent people go free than to convict one innocent person. What Maimonides said was, "it is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death." He didn't apply that high standard to offenses with lesser penalties. If you accept his 99.9% standard, it's grounds for abolishing the death penalty, or reducing the number of crimes that carry a death penalty and requiring corroborating evidence. But it has nothing to do with incarceration. In fact, one reason for high incarceration rates is that people are now sent to prison who would previously have been executed or, in Maimonides's day, flogged, maimed, or banished.
The usual general purpose definition of "reasonable doubt" in English and U.S. law is Blackstone's ratio: "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer" (90% certainty, not 99.9%).
But very few people are actually comfortable with the prospect of 9 contract killers or terrorists escape. So instead of defining a higher legal standard reasonable doubt, like 99.9%, for capital offenses, most jurisdictions reduce the number of capital offenses, make capital punishment rare by replacing it in practice with long sentences, having extensive appeals processes, and/or allow plea bargaining that results in conviction for a non-capital offense instead of the capital crime that the defendant actually committed.
Mazur goes on to say that "every day" there are new reports of exonerations. Since his statistic at the time of writing is about 1,500 exonerations out of millions of convictions in the previous 50 years, he seems to be arithmetically challenged. At one exoneration a day, the Innocence Project couldn't keep up that torrid pace for more than 5 years.
But few if any of the convictions that were overturned were based on uncorroborated DNA evidence, so the statistical reliability of DNA evidence is irrelevant. A much larger number of those convictions were overturned based on DNA forensic evidence. If DNA evidence is so unreliable, what does that say about the exonerations? He doesn't offer even handwaving estimates of the probability of official misconduct, perjury or false accusation, mistaken witness identification, and/or inadequate legal defense. In specific cases, with a competent defense, a jury might be able to estimate the probability that the police doctored the evidence, committed perjury, concealed exculpatory evidence, extorted a false confession, or presented an unreliable witness identification as certain. But there's no a priori basis for an estimate of their probability in general. Only a much higher exoneration rate on appeal than actually exists could provide one.
According to the Innocence Project's database, early all exonerations that are partially based on false or misleading forensic evidence of all types are also based on those other grounds. They include cases where the police or prosecution deliberately or negligently contaminated the forensic evidence.
No doubt DNA evidence would be more reliable if it included more than 13 STR regions, but its reliability already exceeds Maimonides' 99.9% standard by several orders of magnitude, so even including every STR region wouldn't satisfy Mazur. Nothing short of absolute mathematical certainty would satisfy him, and that isn't possible in empirical tests.
The more Mazur warms to his soapbox speech on incarceration, the more completely he abandons probability altogether. If the main reason for high levels of incarceration is that plea bargaining may produce false confessions, probability is irrelevant. When the defense lawyer makes a plea bargain and doesn't raise reasonable doubts, the judge can't even make a wild guess as to the probability that the defendant is not guilty as charged and is not guilty of a more serious offense that merits a more severe sentence. And he gets so busy railing against plea bargaining as a cause of high rates of incarceration that he fails to mention other equally important causes: 20-year mandatory sentences for felonies that used to be 5-10 years, felony sentences for third misdemeanors, and long felony sentences for possession of small quantities of drugs and or a tangential relationship to drug related cases. But none of this discussion belongs in a book on why improbable events occur all the time.
I recommend the rest of the book. Its whole purpose is to provide a quantitative treatment of the same issues that David J. Hand had treated qualitatively in The Improbability Principle, so if you're allergic to math, read Hand's book, instead. Mazur's rough calculations of the probability of specific coincidences are meant as ballpark estimates. To make those estimates, he has to assume some numbers. If you don't like the numbers he assumes, revise his assumptions, make your own estimates, and figure out whether it matters and whether cavilling about details really requires a logical leap to a belief in synchronicity, divine providence, or guardian angels.
But the chapter on legal uses of probability theory is so wretchedly bad that I have to downgrade what's otherwise a 4 star book.
Mazur is right that the reliability of DNA forensic evidence has been overstated on the witness stand, but even his corrected probability estimates of a false positive are much higher than the 99.9% certainty implied by his quotation from Maimonides, citing a secondary source, that it's better to let 1,000 innocent people go free than to convict one innocent person. What Maimonides said was, "it is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death." He didn't apply that high standard to offenses with lesser penalties. If you accept his 99.9% standard, it's grounds for abolishing the death penalty, or reducing the number of crimes that carry a death penalty and requiring corroborating evidence. But it has nothing to do with incarceration. In fact, one reason for high incarceration rates is that people are now sent to prison who would previously have been executed or, in Maimonides's day, flogged, maimed, or banished.
The usual general purpose definition of "reasonable doubt" in English and U.S. law is Blackstone's ratio: "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer" (90% certainty, not 99.9%).
But very few people are actually comfortable with the prospect of 9 contract killers or terrorists escape. So instead of defining a higher legal standard reasonable doubt, like 99.9%, for capital offenses, most jurisdictions reduce the number of capital offenses, make capital punishment rare by replacing it in practice with long sentences, having extensive appeals processes, and/or allow plea bargaining that results in conviction for a non-capital offense instead of the capital crime that the defendant actually committed.
Mazur goes on to say that "every day" there are new reports of exonerations. Since his statistic at the time of writing is about 1,500 exonerations out of millions of convictions in the previous 50 years, he seems to be arithmetically challenged. At one exoneration a day, the Innocence Project couldn't keep up that torrid pace for more than 5 years.
But few if any of the convictions that were overturned were based on uncorroborated DNA evidence, so the statistical reliability of DNA evidence is irrelevant. A much larger number of those convictions were overturned based on DNA forensic evidence. If DNA evidence is so unreliable, what does that say about the exonerations? He doesn't offer even handwaving estimates of the probability of official misconduct, perjury or false accusation, mistaken witness identification, and/or inadequate legal defense. In specific cases, with a competent defense, a jury might be able to estimate the probability that the police doctored the evidence, committed perjury, concealed exculpatory evidence, extorted a false confession, or presented an unreliable witness identification as certain. But there's no a priori basis for an estimate of their probability in general. Only a much higher exoneration rate on appeal than actually exists could provide one.
According to the Innocence Project's database, early all exonerations that are partially based on false or misleading forensic evidence of all types are also based on those other grounds. They include cases where the police or prosecution deliberately or negligently contaminated the forensic evidence.
No doubt DNA evidence would be more reliable if it included more than 13 STR regions, but its reliability already exceeds Maimonides' 99.9% standard by several orders of magnitude, so even including every STR region wouldn't satisfy Mazur. Nothing short of absolute mathematical certainty would satisfy him, and that isn't possible in empirical tests.
The more Mazur warms to his soapbox speech on incarceration, the more completely he abandons probability altogether. If the main reason for high levels of incarceration is that plea bargaining may produce false confessions, probability is irrelevant. When the defense lawyer makes a plea bargain and doesn't raise reasonable doubts, the judge can't even make a wild guess as to the probability that the defendant is not guilty as charged and is not guilty of a more serious offense that merits a more severe sentence. And he gets so busy railing against plea bargaining as a cause of high rates of incarceration that he fails to mention other equally important causes: 20-year mandatory sentences for felonies that used to be 5-10 years, felony sentences for third misdemeanors, and long felony sentences for possession of small quantities of drugs and or a tangential relationship to drug related cases. But none of this discussion belongs in a book on why improbable events occur all the time.
I recommend the rest of the book. Its whole purpose is to provide a quantitative treatment of the same issues that David J. Hand had treated qualitatively in The Improbability Principle, so if you're allergic to math, read Hand's book, instead. Mazur's rough calculations of the probability of specific coincidences are meant as ballpark estimates. To make those estimates, he has to assume some numbers. If you don't like the numbers he assumes, revise his assumptions, make your own estimates, and figure out whether it matters and whether cavilling about details really requires a logical leap to a belief in synchronicity, divine providence, or guardian angels.
April 30, 2016
An interesting concept: take events that would seem to be coincidental, or maybe even "one-in-a-million," and show the true mathematics of the probability. Some great true stories of unlikely happenings throughout history, which were fascinating, but I'd already done the math in graduate school.
February 22, 2018
May be hard to read for the math challenged, but very interesting premise and explanation. Mazur neither debunks nor encourages belief in coincidence, but shows how our thinking distorts many things into significance that are quite explainable statistically.
March 17, 2017
Large swaths of this book were very good. At the end when it begins to wax poetic about the nature of coincidence in science, etc. it got a little slow. But the sections that explains the math behind the apparent coincidences was very good.
January 8, 2017
One of the few popular books these past months with an actual explanation of the underlying math! Well done.
July 21, 2024
A rare 'did not finish'. A third of the way in and just a load of incomprehensible equations and probability ratios with not much of interest unless you love maths.
December 11, 2017
Final review: Yeah, definitely not super impressed. The book really doesn't seem to have a thesis. The math section was kind of a fun thought-experiment but didn't really "prove" anything, in my opinion. I did enjoy the totally random passionate treatise on the Innocence Project and problematic incarceration rates in the US though. And there are definitely some fun tales told in the book.
It kind of feels like the syllabus for some kind of second-year elective that would be really fun to take but at the end of the term when you're reviewing for the exam you realize you're just left with an assortment of facts and stories; you didn't really learn anything substantial.
Interim review: I'm currently halfway through this book, and here's what I think so far. It's definitely an interesting topic, and it's reasonably well-written (even the math parts are easy to follow), but I have some problems.
1) In the first section he defines flukes and coincidences as different things (a distinction I agree with in this context), and then proceeds to use examples of flukes as illustrations of coincidences, so what was the point?
2) He seems to imply that until Cardano's Liber de ludo aleae was published in the 17th C, no one had ever even thought about the math behind chance, probability, and gambling. Just because no one else had published a paper on it doesn't mean some clever tavern-keeper hadn't spent hours idly doing sums while watching people play dice, I think.
3) He obviously talks a lot about odds, probabilities, etc. He also explains the weak law of large numbers, whereby in a large enough sample every possibility, no matter how improbably, is "bound to occur." And then he also points out that every thing that happens is governed by physical laws and can actually be predicted if we have fine enough tools. And he doesn't seem yet to see that these things seem to contradict each other.
Basically, at this point I don't know what he's trying to prove, and I feel like at the halfway point I should have a sense of where it's all going. I don't know if he's trying to prove that there's no such thing as coincidence, or that everything is just random chance, or what. I'll get back to you when I finish the book.
It kind of feels like the syllabus for some kind of second-year elective that would be really fun to take but at the end of the term when you're reviewing for the exam you realize you're just left with an assortment of facts and stories; you didn't really learn anything substantial.
Interim review: I'm currently halfway through this book, and here's what I think so far. It's definitely an interesting topic, and it's reasonably well-written (even the math parts are easy to follow), but I have some problems.
1) In the first section he defines flukes and coincidences as different things (a distinction I agree with in this context), and then proceeds to use examples of flukes as illustrations of coincidences, so what was the point?
2) He seems to imply that until Cardano's Liber de ludo aleae was published in the 17th C, no one had ever even thought about the math behind chance, probability, and gambling. Just because no one else had published a paper on it doesn't mean some clever tavern-keeper hadn't spent hours idly doing sums while watching people play dice, I think.
3) He obviously talks a lot about odds, probabilities, etc. He also explains the weak law of large numbers, whereby in a large enough sample every possibility, no matter how improbably, is "bound to occur." And then he also points out that every thing that happens is governed by physical laws and can actually be predicted if we have fine enough tools. And he doesn't seem yet to see that these things seem to contradict each other.
Basically, at this point I don't know what he's trying to prove, and I feel like at the halfway point I should have a sense of where it's all going. I don't know if he's trying to prove that there's no such thing as coincidence, or that everything is just random chance, or what. I'll get back to you when I finish the book.
November 22, 2017
This book had tons of cool information in it which I am grateful for concerning the math and science behind coincidence. I used to believe more in the magic of the coincidental until this book came along to prove most coincidences are merely rare circumstances which, given long enough, will occur no matter how improbable the chances were in the first place. Well worth my time and effort!
July 13, 2023
The Fluke Ma(th)n
This is a fairly good book on mathematics and coincidence.
I did not find it too groundbreaking or earthshattering in the things I learned from it, but it was still a fun enough read.
I have definitely read better maths books, but I would still give this one a good rating!
3.1/5
This is a fairly good book on mathematics and coincidence.
I did not find it too groundbreaking or earthshattering in the things I learned from it, but it was still a fun enough read.
I have definitely read better maths books, but I would still give this one a good rating!
3.1/5
November 22, 2017
Not sure of the point of the last chapter to be honest... and chapter 10 contained some confusing, conflicting statistics from different sources. But I enjoyed it overall and feel like I learned something
October 29, 2021
potentially interested tho it lost my attention and have not yet bothered to find my way back to it... perhaps one day.
November 16, 2017
This book started well and ended interestingly enough, but oh my, the majority of it bored me with endless probability theory. I guess I should have known, based on the subtitle.
I was so ready to get done I finished it in just 3 days.
If you love probabilities, dive right in.
I was so ready to get done I finished it in just 3 days.
If you love probabilities, dive right in.
October 25, 2017
A random selection of subjects covered and not well written.
December 21, 2017
Fluke, perhaps ironically titled, is a book that might not have been. It starts by telling the stories of a number of coincidences in great detail. They seem astonishing. Well perhaps not astonishing but they could have been interesting if my aunt told them with a twinkle in her eye about how surprising it was to have been there. As it was they sat on the page like a day old fried egg.
The next section dealt in depth with the math of the coincidences in the stories, in great detail and with the formulae. But basically the math boils down to a simple concept. There are an enormous amount of people in the world and the odds of something unusual happening to someone somewhere are a lot higher than they seem. While the formulae are interesting, they hardly add the precision that they seem, since he estimates the data to apply the formula to. They do add an aura of precision, as well as an impassible 50 pages.
Then, as if you don't get the point, he tells the stories again, adding the formulae to the story to demonstrate that most of the coincidences are not really amazing, or even surprising. However a few are.
Then he finished with with another section which was about something and used the word fluke or coincidence a few times. The biggest fluke of all was that when I finished I found a more interesting book. No, on second thought, that wasn't surprising either.
The next section dealt in depth with the math of the coincidences in the stories, in great detail and with the formulae. But basically the math boils down to a simple concept. There are an enormous amount of people in the world and the odds of something unusual happening to someone somewhere are a lot higher than they seem. While the formulae are interesting, they hardly add the precision that they seem, since he estimates the data to apply the formula to. They do add an aura of precision, as well as an impassible 50 pages.
Then, as if you don't get the point, he tells the stories again, adding the formulae to the story to demonstrate that most of the coincidences are not really amazing, or even surprising. However a few are.
Then he finished with with another section which was about something and used the word fluke or coincidence a few times. The biggest fluke of all was that when I finished I found a more interesting book. No, on second thought, that wasn't surprising either.
May 17, 2017
"When you need to knock on wood is when you realize the world is composed of vinyl, naugahyde and aluminum." Mazur realizes this fact too late or perhaps, not at all. This is a patchwork of essays and equations and connections not quite finished. There's an idea here, and a passion for that idea, but the end product is unorganized and a bit messy. Mazur follows in the heavy shadow of this topic's predecessor, David Hand's more superior work, "The Improbability Principle." Where Hand uses math to elevate and explore possibilities, Mazur feels bogged by it, mired by strings of numbers he never pauses to explain or develop. By the end, the steam is gone. By the end, we are subjected to summaries about myths and stories about coincidences giving the last few pages a feel of disjointed book report. By the end, meh. Knock, knock.
September 10, 2017
How unusual are coincidences? The main point of the book is that in a big world (7 Billion people and counting) coincidences are inevitable. Take the case of someone winning the lottery four times. Winning just once - the odds are inordinately high. Winning four times? Well, it's almost incalculable, but he shows the math that *someone* (certainly not me!) would win it that many times. Other examples have wild assumptions to them to display that they are inevitable, or nearly impossible. The last third of the book focusing on myths and fiction - why in a non-fiction book? In fiction you can make up anything. The author seems to run out of steam about a third a way through the slim volume - would have made a better paper.
November 28, 2016
lots of math. not necessary to read through.
1. realization that though mathematics/probabilities/scientific theories are often tied & connected to physical events, there's no literal bond between the two. mathematics just helps us understand these physical events. our understanding of events are based on probabilities of outcomes - mathematically it is impossible to have 100% certainty re. any event.
2. literal randomness has a specific determinant. most events that seem random actually have a cause associated with. we have a hard time understanding the bigness or smallness of our world and our numbers and similarly often misunderstand the likeliness of events.
1. realization that though mathematics/probabilities/scientific theories are often tied & connected to physical events, there's no literal bond between the two. mathematics just helps us understand these physical events. our understanding of events are based on probabilities of outcomes - mathematically it is impossible to have 100% certainty re. any event.
2. literal randomness has a specific determinant. most events that seem random actually have a cause associated with. we have a hard time understanding the bigness or smallness of our world and our numbers and similarly often misunderstand the likeliness of events.
September 16, 2019
Joseph Mazur (the author) goes into so many different ways that chance and probability actually DO predict the totally unlikely, and he points out the POSSIBILITY and PROBABILITY of things that seem extremely unusual, unlikely, and downright freaky and magical occurring, thereby emphasizing the rationality of the world – and the IRRATIONALITY of pseudoscience, premonition, and ESP/psychic beliefs.
He goes into several realms: economy, weather, relationships, and day-to-day life for instance. Reality and probability are both amazing and surprising, and it's interesting to see demonstrated and described how they totally help to define our world and experiences without the need to go to magic!
He goes into several realms: economy, weather, relationships, and day-to-day life for instance. Reality and probability are both amazing and surprising, and it's interesting to see demonstrated and described how they totally help to define our world and experiences without the need to go to magic!
June 10, 2016
I was pleased to receive a copy of Fluke from the Goodreads Giveaway. The author sets out to show the mathematical probability of coincidental events occurring. I though the premise was interesting, however, struggled to follow some of the maths, particularly when it seemed to me that he was guessing as to probability of things happening. The final section of the book did not reallly seem to follow on from the rest of the book and I have to admit to giving up at this stage. I would, however, return to the chapters that explained the maths - to prove to myself that I can get it!
November 16, 2016
I LOVED this book. Such a new topic. So refreshing to read about something random with no clear significance. I mean, it doesn't really affect your life knowing why coincidences and flukes happen, but it sure is interesting.
This book is almost playful, in the way it tries to mathematically quantify anything "coincidence".
It is filled with a lot of great stories, followed by analysis and open-minded discussion.
A very entertaining and most interesting read.
This book is almost playful, in the way it tries to mathematically quantify anything "coincidence".
It is filled with a lot of great stories, followed by analysis and open-minded discussion.
A very entertaining and most interesting read.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 86 reviews