Description
Chasing the odds
“What are the odds?” This is a surprisingly difficult, and loaded, question. Is the improbable event an indication of some hidden mechanism? Or is it just long odds? In this issue, we explore The Unlikely—from how to predict it, to how to live with what we couldn’t predict.
- The Man Who Invented Modern Probability: Chance encounters in the life of Andrei Kolmogorov, by Slava Gerovitch
- Why We Keep Playing the Lottery: Blind to the mathematical odds, we fall to the marketing gods, by Adam Piore
- Chasing Coincidences: Why it’s hard to recognize the unlikely, by Amir D. Aczel
- This issue also includes contributions from: Camille Alexa, Kevin Berger, Coralie Colmez, Jim Davies, Jasper Doest, David Hume, Jude Isabella, Kat McGowan, Steve Paulson, David Ropeik, Leila Schneps, Tom Siegfried, Michael Tuts, Erik Vance, and Lina Zeldovich.