Discover Probability: How To Use It, How To Avoid Misusing It, And How It Affects Every Aspect Of Your Life

To benefit from this book, one must read the text carefully and work the problems. It's not really that advanced, but is very conceptually oriented. It is especially useful for those who wish to actually understand and use probability.

This book serves as an amazing introduction to probability. It provides multiple refreshers for anyone not up to speed on their math skills, while highlighting new concepts incorporating information theory and addressing counter intuitive aspects of probability. The book is at all times inviting and full of examples and exercises. Each of the many illustrations incorporate solutions, but more importantly, why they are in fact solutions. If you're interested in understanding probability at any level, this is an excellent book.

Christmas present. A lot of information that can be applied to one's own life, even the stock market. Not an easy read, but very understandable. glad I got it.

Good book. Well written thus far. Provide some useful examples for teaching.

I have taught math to both high school and university students being aware to their attitude and feeling toward this fields. Many of them , including successful ones, often miss one thing when they study mathematics: the beauty of this field and the joy of learning it. Reading the book of Arie Ben Naim “Discover probability” you will discover also the charm of the science probability has. This is a delightful book . By reading it you learn about the foundations of probability theory with no effort at all but rather with pleasure , remaining amused throughout reading all parts of the book. I am familiar to all the material presented in this book, and still love reading the pretty illustrated examples , the clear and simple way of explaining the theorems always followed by nice helpful examples , keeping rigor and depth. To sum it: you find here an attractive captivating way of presenting the essence of probability. Do not miss the illuminating exercises. I am looking forward to more books on science by Ben Naim like this one , for the sake of the layman the student and the teacher. To my opinion a must for every one who wishes to expand his mind.

This is a very good book providing a preliminary introduction to Probability. To read this book, you do not need to have much mathematical background, and therefore it is especially suitable for those who do not know much about (and are curious about) Probability.This book basically covers all the important basic topics of probabilities, including the laws of calculating probabilities, independence, conditional probability, Bayes’ theorem, random variables, distributions and SMI (i.e., the entropy). You can find those topics in almost every textbook on probability, but this book presents them in a more accessible way.Although this book is mainly for those who are new to the theory of probability, experts could also benefit from reading it, because it contains many many interesting (and tricky) examples. Some of them are Bertrand Paradox, Conditional Probability v.s. Causality, Disjoint Events v.s. Independent Events, Pairwise Independence v.s. Triplewise Independence, misuse of Bayes’ theorem (the paradox of three prisoners’ problem), etc. These topics are so tricky (or even counter-intuitive), that even experts could make mistakes if not careful enough. The author discusses all of them thoroughly and clearly. I believe you should have no confusion once you have read this book.In summary, as its subtitle says, this book tells us how to use probability, how to avoid misusing it and how it affects our life.

This little book on probability is a unique approach to the subject. It is neither too simple nor too difficult. It is also a very honest book. For example when it defines the concept of probability is tells the reader that this is a circular definition but also explains that this does not mean that this is in any way a mistake.The book is divided into "sessions" rather than chapters. Its more like a class discussion on what is going on. It makes the student/reader participate, this is a very valuable approach. The sessions are as follows:1. What is Probability?2. How do We Calculate Probabilities?3. The Axiomatic Approach to Probability4. Independence and Dependence Between Events5. Bayes' Theorem and its Applications6. Average, Variance and Random Variables7. Probability Distributions8. Shannon's Measure of InformationThe first session not only describes probability as a textbook would but rather introduces by explaining how children know of the concept even before they learn of it. This is a fascinating way to introduce the basic idea and also shows the usefulness of educational research. It uses wonderful simple games to describe what is going on, e.g. marbles in an urn, the toss of a dice, darts on a board.This first session is to get to know the idea without being overwhelmed by a sudden mathematical concept, In session 2 we meet the definition of probability again introduced through many useful examples so that, to the reader, this makes sense. This is in fact how people first developed the concept rather than having it handed down from on high as in the usual approach.In session 3 we start to see what many students meet, rather brutally, in many mathematical texts. This is another way to create an axiomatic set of rules to say what probability does: the sample space, the set of events and the probability function. In session 4 we start to make use of some of the set notation first mention in session 3: curly brackets, intersection, union of sets and their associated probabilities. This is done using both Venn diagrams as well as drawings of fair and unfair dice. The idea of dependence and independence is clearly revealed as well as the idea of conditional probability that follows. Correlation is very clearly described and calculated but most importantly there is a section which differentiates between correlation and a causal connection. This is very important and is never clearly differentiated in most texts. There follow a whole range of useful and practical examples.In session 5 on Bayes' theorem we merely extend a little what was done in session 4. This time there are some remarkable examples related to business, medicine, the Monty Hall problem and the three prisoners problem. In session 6 the average, variance and standard deviation are introduced as well as a brief mention of the concept of random variables. In session 7 we meet the various kinds of probability distributions: uniform, normal, exponential, binomial. The examples now also talk more about large numbers of gas molecules thereby gradually leading the student a little into physics. Finally in session 8 the author introduces Shannon's measure of information which arises directly from any given probability distribution. This is very much a unique addition and is rarely seen in the usual texts. This was an excellent idea and introduces the concept long before the student would meet it in later courses in statistical mechanics for example.This little book, only 300 pages or so is not really a textbook, rather it is far more valuable. It is that ideal example of a book that acts as a buffer to a textbook and yet there is no dumbing down. It is perfectly made to be that book that is used by the student to clarify all those things the textbooks never do. An absolute gem for any science student and in fact for all those medical students and arts students who must do some mathematics.

book was delivered in good condition.