Do Dice Play God?
The Mathematics of Uncertainty
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- $22.99
Publisher Description
A celebrated mathematician explores how math helps us make sense of the unpredictable
We would like to believe we can know things for certain. We want to be able to figure out who will win an election, if the stock market will crash, or if a suspect definitely committed a crime. But the odds are not in our favor. Life is full of uncertainty --- indeed, scientific advances indicate that the universe might be fundamentally inexact --- and humans are terrible at guessing. When asked to predict the outcome of a chance event, we are almost always wrong.
Thankfully, there is hope. As award-winning mathematician Ian Stewart reveals, over the course of history, mathematics has given us some of the tools we need to better manage the uncertainty that pervades our lives. From forecasting, to medical research, to figuring out how to win Let's Make a Deal, Do Dice Play God? is a surprising and satisfying tour of what we can know, and what we never will.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Stewart (Significant Figures), an emeritus mathematics professor at Warwick University, delves into the mysteries of probability and statistics in this fascinating look at chaos theory and the uncertainties of the quantum universe. He begins with the surprisingly complex probabilities that arise from dice throwing and coin tossing, but finds his most intriguing material when considering his subject's application to real-life problems. For example, he describes how the egregious misuse of statistics resulted in the murder conviction, later overturned, of a woman who lost two children to sudden infant death syndrome. Elsewhere, he explains how statistics failed to identify the dangers of the morning sickness drug Thalidomide. Stewart's discussion of weather as a "nonlinear system," in which small changes in initial conditions can create large changes in resulting conditions, is effectively conveyed with a detailed explanation of the famous butterfly effect. His discussion of climate also includes concise and convincing ripostes to the common tropes of climate change skeptics. Readers interested in whether Schr dinger's famous cat is actually dead or alive, or how uncertain Heisenberg's uncertainty principle really is, will find in Stewart's survey a challenging but rewarding trip through a quantum world of uncertainties.
