Chance: A Guide to Gambling, Love, the Stock Market, and Just About Everything Else Paperback – December 21, 2005

Reading it now, he's a great writer. Also all my books arrive in a timely manner.

Amazing book.

I first heard of this little gem of a book on NPR's Fresh Air, where the author was being interviewed about it.I wrote down the author and located a copy at the local library. After renewing it several times to the limit, I realized I had to have my own copy.For those who'd like to see statistics and probability applied to real-life problems, this will prove an entertaining book.The math is not difficult, and the author explains it quite well, including why sometimes, your "common sense" can lead you astray.Like all good math books, this one has problems for you to work (with answers) to increase your knowledge. It also has an Appendix with references for further reading.This book was the door that led me to renew my appreciation of the value of math in our everyday lives.

Everyone knows that chance plays a huge role in our lives, in weather, auto accidents, and coincidental meetings, as well as in lotteries and other games. "What are the odds?" is a question we are faced with so many times a day that we probably don't even think about how many unconscious calculations we make trying to predict the future. Probability theory helps us do this; it is "humanity's attempt to use pure mathematics to understand the un-understandable." So writes Amir D. Aczel in _Chance: A Guide to Gambling, Love, the Stock Market, & Just About Everything Else_ (Thunder's Mouth Press). It is a book of mathematics, but it is not intimidating. It is accessible and small, readable in an evening (but readers may spend much more time working on the sample problems), and may present few surprises to those familiar with the subject. The presentation, however, is brisk and clear, and serves very well as a primer to this branch of mathematics.The pretty red and white cover of the book simulates the back of a playing card, and games of chance are a big part of the subject. Not only do the games themselves get examined, but dice and cards give good examples of how probability may be calculated. But more complex life examples are given. As the title insists, probability theory can help you find love (or, for that matter, a good apartment or a companionable puppy). Let's say you are entering a computer dating service, and you expect as many as a hundred relationships, each of which you will experience and then keep that mate or move on. If you just stop at the first prospect, there is a one in a hundred chance that it is the best match for you; similarly, if you get through all 99, the hundredth prospect has a one in a hundred chance of being the best match for you. Neither of those odds is very good. The mathematically best strategy is to date the first 37 matches, and settle on none of them. This enables you to learn about what you are doing and how well the population measures up to what you want. And then, starting with the 38th one, take the candidate that is better than any so far. There's a chance you won't find any such candidate, because the best match was in the first 37 you sampled; but as firm as the mathematics is, nothing in love is certain. As Aczel jokes, "Now, don't you wish your mother would give you advice like that?"There is gambling advice. If you wish to avoid losing money at the casinos, don't gamble. Don't make the mistake that if the die just rolled a two, it is less likely to roll a two next time; dice, or roulette wheels, or all the rest, have no memory. If you have to gamble, and you have a big wad of money to blow, play it all on one big play; if you apportion the money in a series of bets, the money will only be chipped away by the odds that always favor the house. You can get advice on shuffling; a deck riffle shuffled five times still has pockets of order, but seven times will produce randomness. But mostly, this smart little book shows how probability makes a difference in our lives and in the way we think about things. Here you will find the answer to the problem about whether those monkeys on typewriters would ever really produce _Hamlet_, why it always seems as if you get to the bus stop just after the bus has already gone rather than just before it comes, why good things seem to come in threes, and why you should expect in a room of 23 people that two of them ought to have the same birthday. It's an entertaining brief overview of a classic subject.

A short book describing in non-technical terms some standard topics in mathematical probability -- e.g. gambler's ruin, coincidences, birthday problem, secretary problem. The writing style is reasonably clear and accurate. But this type of material has been covered in many other books with more breadth and flair, not to mention value for money. Read instead Rosenthal Struck by Lightning: The Curious World of Probabilities.

Interesting enough look at a topic that many of us struggled through in math and statistics. The examples and "real life" applications are interesting enough, and the book is a pretty quick read. The math itself is conceptually easy to understand - but moving to the math of the problems and the walkthrough of equations leaves a bit to be desired. Might be useful as a supplement to a math textbook or stats class, but tough as a stand alone read.

I personally enjoyed this book and learned a lot from it. It is presented in an entertaining, easy to read format. It is also a very short read which is exactly what I was looking for. I don't understand the low ratings other than perhaps people were expecting a deep technical dive into statistics, which this is surely not. It is a good primer. I picked it up in the bookstore precisely because it was very short, perhaps the online buyer is surprised to see it is a short book upon arrival. Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed it and would recommend it for someone looking to dip their toe into statistics.

Chance: A Guide to Gambling, Love, the Stock Market and Just About Everything Elseby Amir D. AczelThis is a good basic intro to probability. It is accessible but it does have some equations in it. It gives the reader some concrete examples like the birthday problem that allow them to understand important concepts like random distributions. Probability and random events play a huge part in people's lives. This book can help people only slightly familiar with these concepts to get a better grasp of them. Do not put too much stock in the title it will not help you much with any of that.