Lady Luck: The Theory of Probability - Brossura

Weaver, Warren

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0486243427 ISBN 13: 9780486243429

Casa editrice: Dover Pubns, 1983

Riassunto

"Should I take my umbrella?" "Should I buy insurance?" "Which horse should I bet on?" Every day ― in business, in love affairs, in forecasting the weather or the stock market questions arise which cannot be answered by a simple "yes" or "no." Many of these questions involve probability. Probabilistic thinking is as crucially important in ordinary affairs as it is in the most abstruse realms of science.
This book is the best nontechnical introduction to probability ever written. Its author, the late Dr. Warren Weaver, was a professor of mathematics, active in the Rockefeller and Sloan foundations , an authority on communications and probability, and distinguished for his work at bridging the gap between science and the average citizen. In accessible language and drawing upon the widely diverse writings of thinkers like Kurt Godel, Susanne K.Langer, and Nicholas Bernoulli, Dr. Weaver explains such concepts as permutations, independent events, mathematical expectation, the law of averages, Chebychev's theorem, the law of large numbers, and probability distributions. He uses a probabilistic viewpoint to illuminate such matters as rare events and coincidences, and also devotes space to the relations of probability and statistics, gambling, and modern scientific research. Dr. Weaver writes with wit, charm and exceptional clarity. His mathematics is elementary, grasp of the subject profound, and examples fascinating. They are complemented by 49 delightful drawings by Peg Hosford. 13 tables. 49 drawings. Foreword. Index.

Su questo libro

L'autore:

Warren Weaver: A Prolific Mind
Warren Weaver (1894–1978) was an engineer, mathematician, administrator, public advocate for science, information age visionary, and author or co-author of many books including the one on which his authorial fame mostly rests, his and Claude Shannon's epoch-making 1949 work, The Mathematical Theory of Communication.

A man with a restless intelligence, he also wrote an early seminal work on the theory of machine translation, a unique work on the publishing history of Alice in Wonderland in the many languages into which it has been translated, Alice in Many Tongues, and the book which introduced the Sputnik generation and their followers to the intricacies and enjoyment of the basic concepts of probability, Lady Luck: The Theory of Probability. This book, first published in 1963, has been a fixture on the Dover list since 1982.

From the Book:
"I say that you may at the moment be almost bored at the prospect of thinking about thinking. But this book is going to introduce you to a special way of thinking, a special brand of reasoning, which, I am confident, you will find not only useful, but fun as well. It will be about a type of thinking that, when stated boldly, seems a little strange. For we often suppose that we think with the purpose of coming to definite and sure conclusions. This book, on the contrary, deals with thinking about uncertainty."

In the Author's Own Words:
"We keep, in science, getting a more and more sophisticated view of our essential ignorance." — Warren Weaver

Contenuti:

Foreword I Thoughts about Thinking The Reasoning Animal Reasoning and Fun The Kind of Questions We Have to Answer What Kind of Reasoning Is Able to Furnish Useful Replies to Questions of This Sort Thinking and Reasoning Classical Logic II The Birth of Lady Luck III The Concept of Mathematical Probability Don't Expect Too Much Mathematical Theories and the Real World of Events Mathematical Models Can There Be Laws for Chance? The Rolling of a Pair of Dice The Number of Outcomes Equally Probable Outcomes Ways of Designing Models The Definition of Mathematical Probability A Recapitulation and a Look Ahead Note on Terminology Note on Other Books about Probability IV The Counting of Cases Preliminary Compound Events Permutations Combinations More Complicated Cases V Some Basic Probability Rules A Preliminary Warning Independent Events and Mutually Exclusive Events Converse Events Fundamental Formulas for Total and for Compound Probability VI Some Problems Foreword The First Problem of de Méré The Problem of the Three Chests A Few Classical Problems The Birthday Problem Montmort's Problem Try These Yourself Note about Decimal Expansions VII Mathematical Expectation How Can I Measure My Hopes? Mathematical Expectation The Jar with 100 Balls The One-Armed Bandit The Nicolas Bernoulli Problem The St. Petersburg Paradox Summary Remarks about Mathematical Expectation Try These Where Do We Eat? VIII The Law of Averages The Long Run Heads or Tails IX Variability and Chebychev's Theorem Variability Chebychev's Theorem X Binomial Experiments Binomial Experiments "Why "Binomial"?" Pascal's Arithmetic Triangle Binomial Probability Theorem Some Characteristics of Binomial Experiments XI The Law of Large Numbers Bernoulli's Theorem Comments About the Classical Law of Large Numbers Improved Central Limit Theorems Note on Large Numbers XII Distribution Functions and Probabilities Probability Distributions Normalized Charts The Normal or Gaussian Distribution What Is Normally Distributed? The Quincunx "Other Probability Distributions, The Poisson Distribution" The Distribution of First Significant Digits XIII "Rare Events, Coincidences, and Surprising Occurrences" "Well, What Do You Think about That!" Small Probabilities Note on the Probability of Dealing Any Specified Hand of Thirteen Cards Further Note on Rare Events XIV Probability and Statistics Statistics Deduction and Induction Sampling What Sort of Answers Can Statistics Furnish? The Variation of Random Samples Questions (2) and (3): Statistical Inference Question (4): Experimental Design XV Probability and Gambling The Game of Craps The Ruin of the Player "Roulette, Lotteries, Bingo, and the Like" Gambling Systems XVI Lady Luck Becomes a Lady Preliminary The Probability of an Event Geometrical Probabilities It Can't Be Chance! The Surprising Stability of Statistical Results The Subtlety of Probabilistic Reasoning The Modern Reign of Probability Lady Luck and the Future Index

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Dover Pubns
• Data di pubblicazione: 1983
• ISBN 10: 0486243427
• ISBN 13: 9780486243429
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 392