RandomnessHarvard University Press, 2009 M07 1 - 256 páginas From the ancients' first readings of the innards of birds to your neighbor's last bout with the state lottery, humankind has put itself into the hands of chance. Today life itself may be at stake when probability comes into play--in the chance of a false negative in a medical test, in the reliability of DNA findings as legal evidence, or in the likelihood of passing on a deadly congenital disease--yet as few people as ever understand the odds. This book is aimed at the trouble with trying to learn about probability. A story of the misconceptions and difficulties civilization overcame in progressing toward probabilistic thinking, Randomness is also a skillful account of what makes the science of probability so daunting in our own day. To acquire a (correct) intuition of chance is not easy to begin with, and moving from an intuitive sense to a formal notion of probability presents further problems. Author Deborah Bennett traces the path this process takes in an individual trying to come to grips with concepts of uncertainty and fairness, and also charts the parallel path by which societies have developed ideas about chance. Why, from ancient to modern times, have people resorted to chance in making decisions? Is a decision made by random choice fair? What role has gambling played in our understanding of chance? Why do some individuals and societies refuse to accept randomness at all? If understanding randomness is so important to probabilistic thinking, why do the experts disagree about what it really is? And why are our intuitions about chance almost always dead wrong? Anyone who has puzzled over a probability conundrum is struck by the paradoxes and counterintuitive results that occur at a relatively simple level. Why this should be, and how it has been the case through the ages, for bumblers and brilliant mathematicians alike, is the entertaining and enlightening lesson of Randomness. |
Contenido
Chance Encounter | 1 |
Why Resort Chance? | 11 |
When the God Played Die | 28 |
Figuring the Odds | 46 |
Mind Games for Gamblers | 64 |
Chance or Necessity? | 83 |
Order in Apparent | 109 |
Wanted Random Numbers | 132 |
Randomness as Uncertainty | 152 |
Paradoxes in Probability | 174 |
Notes | 191 |
209 | |
233 | |
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Términos y frases comunes
Abraham De Moivre ancient Annie astragalus astronomical bell curve birth blue Cardano Carla cast Central Limit Theorem century Ching Cicero circa coin correlation Daniel Bernoulli Daniel Kahneman described determined deviation dice showing four dice throws divine Edgeworth equally likely outcomes example experiment fair Figure formula Galton gambler games of chance girl Girolamo Cardano go free Gosset Greek happen hexagram intuition Kahneman Karl Pearson Kendall Kolmogorov Laplace large number long run lottery Mahabharata mathematical mean measurement Moivre Monte Carlo method normal curve normal distribution number of dice observational errors occur odds oracle paradox particular Pearson percent play players possible predict prob problem quincunx random digits random numbers random samples random sequence randomly result second throw side small samples spinner statistical tail theory of probability three dice tion toss total number Tversky twelve dice Venn Weldon Z₁