Chance

A Guide to Gambling, Love, the Stock Market and Just about Everything Else

Dr. Amir D. Aczel

• Printable AI Sheet
• high resolution jacket image
• Amir Aczel in The Times - April 16th 2005 >>

Dr. Amir Aczel reveals the tools to control the effects of chance on your life

Does the bus always seem to take longer than average to arrive? There's a mathematical reason for it.

Have you invested in real estate, or bought stock in a nasdaq company? What type of return can you expect?

How do political polls work, and what is a margin of error?

What's the best way to bluff at poker, or count cards in blackjack?

If you absolutely had to gamble, which strategy ensures the highest probability of success?

Find out the answers to these and many more questions in Chance... perhaps the most important book you'll ever read.

Let's say in your lifetime you could date a hundred people—how many should you go out with before settling down and marrying?

In Chance, celebrated mathematician Amir D. Aczel turns his sights on probability theory—the branch of mathematics that measures the likelihood of a random event. He explains probability in clear, layperson's terms, and shows its practical applications.

What is commonly called "luck" has mathematical roots—and in Chance, you'll learn to increase your odds of success in everything from true love to the stock market. For thousands of years, the twin forces of chance and mischance have beguiled humanity like none other. Why does fortune smile on some people, and smirk on others? What is luck, and why does it so often visit the undeserving? How can we predict the random events happening around us—even better, how can we manipulate them? In this delightful and lucid voyage through the realm of the random, Dr. Aczel once again makes higher mathematics intelligible to us.