Chancing It
The Laws of Chance and How They Can Work for You
1st Edition
Published on 19. September 2017
304 pages
978-1-5107-2381-8 (ISBN)
Description
Make your own luck by understanding probability
Over the years, some very smart people have thought they understood the rules of chance?only to fail dismally. Whether you call it probability, risk, or uncertainty, the workings of chance often defy common sense. Fortunately, advances in math and science have revealed the laws of chance, and understanding those laws can help in your everyday life.
In Chancing It, award-winning scientist and writer Robert Matthews shows how to understand the laws of probability and use them to your advantage. He gives you access to some of the most potent intellectual tools ever developed and explains how to use them to guide your judgments and decisions. By the end of the book, you will know:
- How to understand and even predict coincidences
- When an insurance policy is worth having
- Why "expert" predictions are often misleading
- How to tell when a scientific claim is a breakthrough or baloney
- When it makes sense to place a bet on anything from sports to stock markets
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10/2017
Sky Pony Press
€42.27
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Person
Robert Matthews is one of Britain?s most experienced and successful science writers and broadcasters. He has won numerous awards for his writing, including the Association of British Science Writers? Feature Writer of the Year Award, and also won an Ig Nobel Prize for showing why toast tends to land butter-side down. He is currently a visiting professor at Aston University, where he specializes in probability and statistics. Matthews lives in Oxfordshire, England.
Larry Gonick is the author of The Cartoon Guide to Statistics and The Cartoon Guide to Calculus.
Larry Gonick is the author of The Cartoon Guide to Statistics and The Cartoon Guide to Calculus.
Content
- Intro
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Contents
- Dedication
- Foreword by Larry Gonick
- Introduction
- 1. The coin-tossing prisoner of the Nazis
- 2. What the Law of Averages really means
- 3. The dark secret of the Golden Theorem
- 4. The First Law of Lawlessness
- 5. What are the chances of that?
- 6. Thinking independently is no yolk
- 7. Random lessons from the lottery
- 8. Warning: there's a lot of X about
- 9. Why the amazing so often turns ho-hum
- 10. If you don't know, go random
- 11. Doing the right thing isn't always ethical
- 12. How a lot of bull sparked a revolution
- 13. How to beat casinos at their own game
- 14. Where wise-guys go wrong
- 15. The Golden Rule of Gambling
- 16. Insure it - or chance it?
- 17. Making better bets in the Casino of Life
- 18. Tell me straight, doc - what are my chances?
- 19. This is not a drill! Repeat: this is not a drill!
- 20. The miraculous formula of Reverend Bayes
- 21. When Dr Turing met Reverend Bayes
- 22. Using Bayes to be a better judge
- 23. A scandal of significance
- 24. Dodging the Amazing Baloney Machine
- 25. Making use of what you already know
- 26. I'm sorry, professor, I just don't buy it
- 27. The Amazing Curve for Everything
- 28. The dangers of thinking everything's Normal
- 29. Ugly sisters and evil twins
- 30. Going to extremes
- 31. See a Nicolas Cage movie and die
- 32. We've got to draw the line somewhere
- 33. Playing the markets isn't rocket science
- 34. Beware geeks bearing models
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
- Index
