Do Dice Play God?: The Mathematics of Uncertainty - Couverture souple

Stewart, Professor Ian

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1781259445 ISBN 13 : 9781781259443

Editeur : Profile Books Ltd, 2020

Synopsis

Uncertainty is everywhere. It lurks in every consideration of the future - the weather, the economy, the sex of an unborn child - even quantities we think that we know such as populations or the transit of the planets contain the possibility of error. It's no wonder that, throughout that history, we have attempted to produce rigidly defined areas of uncertainty - we prefer the surprise party to the surprise asteroid.

We began our quest to make certain an uncertain world by reading omens in livers, tea leaves, and the stars. However, over the centuries, driven by curiosity, competition, and a desire be better gamblers, pioneering mathematicians and scientists began to reduce wild uncertainties to tame distributions of probability and statistical inferences. But, even as unknown unknowns became known unknowns, our pessimism made us believe that some problems were unsolvable and our intuition misled us. Worse, as we realized how omnipresent and varied uncertainty is, we encountered chaos, quantum mechanics, and the limitations of our predictive power.

Bestselling author Professor Ian Stewart explores the history and mathematics of uncertainty. Touching on gambling, probability, statistics, financial and weather forecasts, censuses, medical studies, chaos, quantum physics, and climate, he makes one thing clear: a reasonable probability is the only certainty.

A propos du livre

À propos de l?auteur

Ian Stewart is Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at
the University of Warwick and the author of the bestseller Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities.
His recent books include Do Dice Play God?, Significant Figures, Professor Stewart's Incredible Numbers, Seventeen Equations that Changed the World, Professor Stewart's Casebook of Mathematical Mysteries and Calculating the Cosmos.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Society.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Profile Books Ltd
• Date d'édition: 2020
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1781259445
• ISBN 13: 9781781259443
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 304
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
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