What Are the Chances?

What Are the Chances? PDF Author: Barbara Blatchley
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231552750
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Winner, 2023 William James Book Award, American Psychological Association Division 1 in General Psychology Most of us, no matter how rational we think we are, have a lucky charm, a good-luck ritual, or some other custom we follow in the hope that it will lead to a good result. Is the idea of luckiness just a way in which we try to impose order on chaos? Do we live in a world of flukes and coincidences, good and bad breaks, with outcomes as random as a roll of the dice—or can our beliefs help change our luck? What Are the Chances? reveals how psychology and neuroscience explain the significance of the idea of luck. Barbara Blatchley explores how people react to random events in a range of circumstances, examining the evidence that the belief in luck helps us cope with a lack of control. She tells the stories of lucky and unlucky people—who won the lottery multiple times, survived seven brushes with death, or found an apparently cursed Neanderthal mummy—as well as the accidental discoveries that fundamentally changed what we know about the brain. Blatchley considers our frequent misunderstanding of randomness, the history of luckiness in different cultures and religions, the surprising benefits of magical thinking, and many other topics. Offering a new view of how the brain handles the unexpected, What Are the Chances? shows why an arguably irrational belief can—fingers crossed—help us as we struggle with an unpredictable world.

What Are the Chances?

What Are the Chances? PDF Author: Barbara Blatchley
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231552750
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Get Book Here

Book Description
Winner, 2023 William James Book Award, American Psychological Association Division 1 in General Psychology Most of us, no matter how rational we think we are, have a lucky charm, a good-luck ritual, or some other custom we follow in the hope that it will lead to a good result. Is the idea of luckiness just a way in which we try to impose order on chaos? Do we live in a world of flukes and coincidences, good and bad breaks, with outcomes as random as a roll of the dice—or can our beliefs help change our luck? What Are the Chances? reveals how psychology and neuroscience explain the significance of the idea of luck. Barbara Blatchley explores how people react to random events in a range of circumstances, examining the evidence that the belief in luck helps us cope with a lack of control. She tells the stories of lucky and unlucky people—who won the lottery multiple times, survived seven brushes with death, or found an apparently cursed Neanderthal mummy—as well as the accidental discoveries that fundamentally changed what we know about the brain. Blatchley considers our frequent misunderstanding of randomness, the history of luckiness in different cultures and religions, the surprising benefits of magical thinking, and many other topics. Offering a new view of how the brain handles the unexpected, What Are the Chances? shows why an arguably irrational belief can—fingers crossed—help us as we struggle with an unpredictable world.

What Are the Chances?

What Are the Chances? PDF Author: Bart K. Holland
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 9780801869419
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
Roulette wheels and the plague -- Surely something's wrong with you -- The life table : you can bet on it! -- The rarest events -- The waiting game -- Stockbrokers and climate change.

The Chances

The Chances PDF Author: George Villiers Duke of Buckingham
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 70

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Book Description


Taking Chances

Taking Chances PDF Author: John Haigh
Publisher: Winning with Probability
ISBN: 0198526636
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
"What are the odds against winning the Lotto, The Weakest Link, or Who Wants to be a Millionaire? The answer lies in the science of probability, yet many of us are unaware of how this science works. Every day, people make judgements on a wide variety of situations where chance plays a role, including buying insurance, betting on horse-racing, following medical advice - even carrying an umbrella. In Taking Chances, John Haigh guides the reader round common pitfalls, demonstrates how to make better-informed decisions, and shows where the odds can be unexpectedly in your favour. This new edition has been fully updated, and includes information on top television shows, plus a new chapter on Probability for Lawyers."--BOOK JACKET.

“The” Chances

“The” Chances PDF Author: George Villiers “of” Buckingham
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 88

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Book Description


“The” Chances

“The” Chances PDF Author: David Garrick
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 72

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Book Description


Chances Are

Chances Are PDF Author: Steve Slavin
Publisher: Madison Books
ISBN: 146162293X
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
Chances Are is the first book to make statistics accessible to everyone, regardless of how much math you remember from school.

The Chances,

The Chances, PDF Author: John Fletcher
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 80

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Book Description


Chances

Chances PDF Author: Freya North
Publisher: HarperCollins UK
ISBN: 000732667X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 27

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Book Description
The stunning summer besteller from Freya North.

Chances Are . . .

Chances Are . . . PDF Author: Michael Kaplan
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 9780143038344
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
A compelling journey through history, mathematics, and philosophy, charting humanity’s struggle against randomness Our lives are played out in the arena of chance. However little we recognize it in our day-to-day existence, we are always riding the odds, seeking out certainty but settling—reluctantly—for likelihood, building our beliefs on the shadowy props of probability. Chances Are is the story of man’s millennia-long search for the tools to manage the recurrent but unpredictable—to help us prevent, or at least mitigate, the seemingly random blows of disaster, disease, and injustice. In these pages, we meet the brilliant individuals who developed the first abstract formulations of probability, as well as the intrepid visionaries who recognized their practical applications—from gamblers to military strategists to meteorologists to medical researchers, from blackjack to our own mortality.