The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day

. He is the former president of the Royal Statistical Society and the chief scientific adviser to Winton Capital Management, one of Europe's most successful algorithmic-trading hedge funds. Hand is an emeritus professor of mathematics and a senior research investigator at Imperial College London. David J. Hand lives in

A touch of levity goes a long way toward making the subject engaging. --Bridget Thoreson . As Hand shows, probabilities are also about people—what we view as remarkable and why. Unexpected financial meltdowns. The principle hinges on the idea that seemingly improbable events, from the individual to the cosmic level, are commonplace due to several factors. Hand notes the counterintuitive nature of certain aspects of probability, as well as the history of how understanding in the field has developed. From Booklist Multiple lottery wins. These events, while astounding, are nonetheless to be expected, as mathematics professor Hand capably explains in this well-plotted book. Academic but not dry, the concepts are presented in a relevant way and at a good clip, with some eye-catching

"Dull as it gets" according to Skeptical by nature. I've read a lot of books on statistics, both texts for work and more casual books for entertainment value. This is among the worst that I have read.The examples are dull, recycled, and mostly uninteresting. The concepts seem too basic for the length of the book. And in the end it just is not interesting. Pass on this one.When I read one star reviews, I often wish the reviewers would tell me what they did enjoy, so that I could calibrate their review and, potentially, so that I could find something better. So here I'll do that. Here are two books of similar nature, both of which are far better than The. Frank Scoblete author of Confessions of a Wayward Catholic said Do You Gamble? This Book is for You.. You are at the craps table and the 1"Do You Gamble? This Book is for You." according to Frank Scoblete author of Confessions of a Wayward Catholic. You are at the craps table and the 12 rolls four times in a row. The odds of that happening are immense. At blackjack, two people come to the table at the same time and both get blackjacks --- back to back. After that you watch their play and they are not advantage players. They don’t even know basic strategy. A guy hits two inside numbers in a row at roulette. Then he bets the outside red and black and wins six in a row!The same woman wins two lotteries in New Jersey. Two people, a father and a son, have train accidents on the same day in two separate years. Someone is hit by lightning not twic. rolls four times in a row. The odds of that happening are immense. At blackjack, two people come to the table at the same time and both get blackjacks --- back to back. After that you watch their play and they are not advantage players. They don’t even know basic strategy. A guy hits two inside numbers in a row at roulette. Then he bets the outside red and black and wins six in a row!The same woman wins two lotteries in New Jersey. Two people, a father and a son, have train accidents on the same day in two separate years. Someone is hit by lightning not twic. Ellen Jackson said Another five-star review. In the last year, I've read four or five books on probability. This one is the best of the lot. It's clear, entertaining, and easy to understand.People long for miracles. Everywhere you look there are charlatans ready to sell you a lottery ticket or a hot new stock and clean out your bank account. Even if no financial harm is involved, a belief in miracles and superstition can encourage an attitude of fatalism and passivity, diverting attention from real solutions to pressing problems.This book is the antidote to that kind of ignorance and passivity. It should be required reading in every high school.

Not only that, we should all expect to experience a miracle roughly once every month. In fact, they're commonplace. All we need, Hand argues, is a firm grounding in a powerful set of laws: the laws of inevitability, of truly large numbers, of selection, of the probability lever, and of near enough. And together, they explain why we should not be so surprised to bump into a friend in a foreign country, or to come across the same unfamiliar word four times in one day. An irresistible adventure into the laws behind "chance" moments and a trusty guide for understanding the world and universe we live in,