Chance The Life of Games & the Game of Life [Paperback]

This is a unique book on how probability affects our everyday lives. It guides the reader in an almost chronological trip through the fascinating and amazing laws of chance, omnipresent in the natural world and in our daily lives. Along the way many fascinating topics are discussed. These include challenging probability paradoxes, paranormal coincidences, game odds, and causes and effects. Finally the author discusses possibilities and limitations of learning the laws of a Universe immersed in chance events. This charming book, with its many easy-to-follow mathematical examples, will inform and entertain the scientist and non-scientist alike.

This is a unique and charming book on how probability affects our everyday lives. It guides the reader in an almost chronological trip through the fascinating and amazing laws of chance, omnipresent in the natural world and in our daily lives.

Our lives are immersed in a sea of chance. Everyones existence is a meeting point of a multitude of accidents. The origin of the word chance is usually traced back to the vulgar Latin word cadentia, meaning a befalling by fortuitous circumstances, with no knowable or determinable causes. The Roman philosopher Cicero clearly expressed the idea of chance in his work De Divinatione: For we do not apply the words chance, luck, accident or casualty except toanevent which hassooccurredorhappened that it either might not have occurred at all, or might have occurred in any other way. 2.VI.15. For if a thing that is going to happen, may happen in one way or another, indi?erently, chance is predominant; but things that happen by chance cannot be certain. 2.IX.24. Ina certain sensechance isthespiceoflife. Iftherewerenophenomena with unforeseeable outcomes, phenomena with an element of chance, all temporal causee?ect sequences would be completely deterministic.Probabilities and Games of Chance.- Amazing Conditions.- Expecting to Win.- The Wonderful'