The Empire of Chance tells how quantitative ideas of chance transformed the natural and social sciences, as well as daily life over the last three centuries. A continuous narrative connects the earliest application of probability and statistics in gambling and insurance to the most recent forays into law, medicine, polling and baseball. Separate chapters explore the theoretical and methodological impact in biology, physics and psychology. Themes recur - determinism, inference, causality, free will, evidence, the shifting meaning of probability - but in dramatically different disciplinary and historical contexts. In contrast to the literature on the mathematical development of probability and statistics, this book centres on how these technical innovations remade our conceptions of nature, mind and society. Written by an interdisciplinary team of historians and philosophers, this readable, lucid account keeps technical material to an absolute minimum. It is aimed not only at specialists
Why is split second decision-making superior to deliberation? Gut Feelings delivers the science behind Malcolm Gladwell?s Blink Reflection and reason are overrated, according to renowned psychologist
A guide to making better decisions with our money, health and personal lives. It examines the many psychological, societal, and mathematical factors that contribute to our collective misunderstanding
"An eye-opening look at the ways we misjudge risk every day and a guide to making better decisions with our money, health, and personal lives In the age of Big Data we often believe that our predict
"An eye-opening look at the ways we misjudge risk every day and a guide to making better decisions with our money, health, and personal lives In the age of Big Data we often believe that our predictio
However much we want certainty in our lives, it feels as if we live in an uncertain and dangerous world. But are we guilty of exaggerating the chances of some unwanted event happening to us? Are we mi
A sportsman can catch a ball without calculating its speed or distance. A group of amateurs beat the experts at playing stock market. A man falls for right woman even though she's 'wrong' on paper. Al
This is a fascinating, practical guide to making better decisions with our money, health and personal lives from Gerd Gigerenzer, the author of Reckoning with Risk. Numbers don't lie - but they often
Where do new ideas come from? What is social intelligence? Why do social scientists perform mindless statistical rituals? This vital book is about rethinking rationality as adaptive thinking: to under
Gerd Gigerenzer's influential work examines the rationality of individuals not from the perspective of logic or probability, but from the point of view of adaptation to the real world of human behavio
Gerd Gigerenzer's influential work examines the rationality of individuals not from the perspective of logic or probability, but from the point of view of adaptation to the real world of human behavi
At the beginning of the twentieth century, H. G. Wells predicted that statistical thinking would be as necessary for citizenship in a technological world as the ability to read and write. But in the
Statistical illiteracy can have an enormously negative impact on decision making. This volume of collected papers brings together applied and theoretical research on risks and decision making across t
