Chance: A Guide to Gambling, Love, the Stock Market, and Just About Everything Else - Hardcover

Aczel, Amir D.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1568583168 ISBN 13: 9781568583167

Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2004

Synopsis

Chance defines our life. Will you get the job, the lover, and the money? Now Amir Aczel, in this slim book modeled on his very successful Fermat's Last Theorem, gives readers the tools to minimize, or maximize, chance's effect on their lives. Chance marks Aczel's return to his preferred field: the popularization of mathematics. Here, Aczel explores probability theory and its daily, practical applications, while along the way relating stories of inveterate gamblers who also happen to be mathematical geniuses. With the clarity of the statistician he once was, Aczel analyzes what is commonly known as luck. Alongside chapters on "The Surprising Birthday Problem," "Coincidences," and "How to Make Great Decisions" are a history of probability theory and anecdotes of its daily applications.

About this title

About the Author:

Amir D. Aczel earned both his BA in mathematics and Master of Science degree from the University of Oregon. Among many other books, he is the author of Entanglement: The Greatest Mystery in Physics; The Mystery of the Aleph: Mathematics, the Kabbalah, and the Search for Infinity; and Fermat's Last Theorem: Unlocking the Secret of an Ancient Mathematical Problem, which was translated into fifteen languages. He is an internationnaly known mathematician and lives in Boston.

From Publishers Weekly:

The baffling, for some, subject of chance and luck is demystified in this sketchy but engaging treatise. Mathematician Aczel (Fermat's Last Theorem) includes some equations, but mostly sticks to grade-school arithmetic and a few easy story problems in explicating the mathematics of probability. He untangles a number of urgent conundrums, including why buses always seem to run late, why any group of 31 people will include two with the same birthday and why random walks can model the stock market. The book abounds in counterintuitive life lessons. You shouldn't gamble, he says, but if you do then you are better off, probability-wise, if you blow your whole wad on a single spin of the roulette wheel than if you parcel it out in smaller bets. And the lovelorn can take comfort in knowing that, if you just keep dating, the odds are surprisingly good that your soul mate will turn up. Indeed, "[y]ou will maximize your probability of finding the best spouse if you date thirty-seven percent of the available candidates in your life, and then choose to stay with the next candidate who is better than all previous ones." Aczel's treatments of some topics, like game theory, are so perfunctory as to barely register, but his light touch generally makes probability come alive.
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About this edition

• Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 1568583168
• ISBN 13: 9781568583167
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 161