Everyone who's had to get to grips with chance knows how tricky even its simplest manifestations can be. Its workings are a constant challenge to common sense: a run of luck goes bad just when you trust it; expert predictions of everything from the weather to elections prove hopelessly unreliable; proven health advice turns out to be anything but.
Award-winning scientist and writer Robert Matthews shows us how we can cut through the conundrums of chance. He gives us access to some of the most potent intellectual tools ever developed, and explains how we can use them to guide our judgements and decisions. By the end of the book you'll know:
-The secret to predicting coincidences;
-The golden rule of professional gamblers;
-How to tell when insurance is a waste of money;
-When to heed health and diet warnings - and when to ignore them;
-How to tell when forecasts are worth taking seriously;
-How to make better choices in the face of uncertainty.
Using a host of real-life examples, this groundbreaking book shows how the laws of probability can sharpen your decisions, make the most of your luck - and quite possibly transform your life.
Autorentext
Robert Matthews is a Visiting Professor at Aston University, specialising in the mathematics of chance and uncertainty. His research on issues ranging from the prediction of coincidences to methods for turning evidence into insight has been published in many leading journals, including Nature and The Lancet. He is also an award-winning science writer, Science Consultant to BBC Focus and a former specialist correspondent with The Times and Sunday Telegraph. www.robertmatthews.org
Zusammenfassung
Chance, risk, uncertainty: they're all part of our lives, whether we're in business or on the school run, deciding future strategy or just the best route home. Sometimes their effects are intriguing: a streak of extraordinary luck, say, or some bizarre coincidence. More often they just leave us confused, unnerved - even anxious. When is a series of odd events mere happenstance, or something more significant? How do we make sense of the ever-changing evidence about what's good or bad for us? Just how reliable are predictions of weather, climate and elections - and how should we respond to them? In this book, award-winning scientist and writer Robert Matthews shows how we can cut through such conundrums using some of the most potent intellectual tools ever developed: the laws of probability. Using real-life examples, he shows how to wield them to: Understand and even predict coincidencesTell when insurance policies are worth havingMake sense of medical tests and scientific 'breakthroughs'Judge when "expert" evidence is compelling or questionableMake decisions about everything from sports betting to weather forecastsProfessor Matthews also gives a groundbreaking introduction to the power of Bayes's Theorem, whose ability to turn evidence into insight is now transforming our lives - and helping to unmask a major scientific scandal.