For you to be here today reading this requires a mind-boggling series of lucky breaks, starting with the Big Bang and ending in your own conception. So it's not surprising that we persist in thinking that we're in with a chance, whether we're playing the lottery or working out the likelihood of extra-terrestrial life. In Chance, a (not entirely) random selection of the New Scie...(展开全部)

This book tells how quantitative ideas of chance have transformed the natural and social sciences as well as everyday life over the past three centuries. A continuous narrative connects the earliest application of probability and statistics in gambling and insurance to the most recent forays into law, medicine, polling, and baseball. Separate chapters explore the theoretical an...(展开全部)

By explaining how to sire multicolored horses, produce nuts without shells, and create an egg the size of a human head, Giambattista Della Porta's "Natural Magic" (1559) conveys a fascination with tricks and illusions that makes it a work difficult for historians of science to take seriously. Yet, according to William Eamon, it is in the 'how-to' books written by medieval alche...(展开全部)

By explaining how to sire multicolored horses, produce nuts without shells, and create an egg the size of a human head, Giambattista Della Porta's "Natural Magic" (1559) conveys a fascination with tricks and illusions that makes it a work difficult for historians of science to take seriously. Yet, according to William Eamon, it is in the 'how-to' books written by medieval alche...(展开全部)

What if being lucky was a skill that you could master and share with other people? Modern life is full of chance encounters, changing plans, delayed journeys, human errors and other mishaps. So, what if we use such unpredictability to our advantage? Dr Christian Busch has spent a decade exploring how, if acted upon, unexpected encounters can enhance our worldview, expand our so...(展开全部)

Fooled by Randomness is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand. The other books in the series are The Black Swan, Antifragile, Skin in the Game, and The Bed of Procrustes. Fooled by Randomness is the word-of-mouth sens...(展开全部)

“[Taleb is] Wall Street’s principal dissident. . . . [Fooled By Randomness] is to conventional Wall Street wisdom approximately what Martin Luther’s ninety-nine theses were to the Catholic Church.” – Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker Finally in paperback, the word-of-mouth sensation that will change the way you think about the markets and the world.This book is about luck: m...(展开全部)

Named a Best Book of the Year by Forbes and The Economist From our "greatest living statistical communicator" (Tim Harford) comes an invaluable, data-driven guide for understanding―and learning to embrace―risk and uncertainty in our daily lives. How dangerous is our diet? How much of sports falls into the realm of luck? When authorities categorize a given event as “highly likel...(展开全部)

From our “greatest living statistical communicator” (Tim Harford) comes an invaluable, data-driven guide for understanding―and learning to embrace―risk and uncertainty in our daily lives. How dangerous is our diet? How much of sports falls into the realm of luck? When authorities categorize a given event as “highly likely”―how likely is that, really? Whether we’re trying to dec...(展开全部)