Expect the unexpected

摘要

People thought it was a fix when the Bulgarian lottery announced the same six winning numbers on two consecutive draws in 2009. The national sports minister launched an investigation, but found no tampering; the repetition was mere chance. How are such coincidences possible? In The Improbability Principle, statistician David J. Hand delves into extreme unlikelihoods, from duplicate lottery results to global financial meltdowns. "We should expect the unexpected," he explains, in this lucid overview of the mathematics of chance and the psychological phenomena that can make probability seem counter-intuitive to so many.