From
the Back Cover:
An entertaining and accessible
introduction to how chance works and the role it
plays in everyday life, discussing chances of winning
the lottery, the potential of making a living as
a gambler, and the possibility of the universe as
a predictable machine. Orkin is professor of statistics
at California State University-Hayward. He is interviewed
frequently on radio and television shows nationwide.Book
News, Inc.®, Portland, OR Plainview
[TX] Daily Herald
"A great primer that everyone, not just gamblers,
needs in order to understand the difference between
luck and reality."
Did
you know that if you drive ten miles to buy a
Powerball ticket, you're sixteen times more likely
to die in a car crash than you are to win the
jackpot? Or that, while it is nearly impossible
for a coin to land on heads one hundred times
in a row, it is equally improbable for any other
specific sequence to come up? As Orkin's Law of
Absurdity states, "Everything is impossible,
yet something must happen."
Full
of surprising facts and useful information, What
Are the Odds? is a delightful introduction to
how chance works and the role it plays in our
everyday lives. It answers such practical questions
as:
*
When is a weird event due to chance and when is
it due to something else?
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