MARC Record from marc_columbia

LEADER: 02799cam a2200409 i 4500
001 14210712
005 20190823142328.0
008 190201t20192019enka b 001 0 eng d
024 $a60002330031
035 $a(OCoLC)on1091690844
040 $aUKMGB$beng$erda$cUKMGB$dOCLCO$dOCLCF$dNZLEP$dYDX
020 $a9781781259436$qhardcover
020 $a1781259437$qhardcover
020 $a9781788162289$qpaperback
020 $a1788162285$qpaperback
020 $z9781782834014$qelectronic publication
035 $a(OCoLC)1091690844
050 4 $aQA273$b.S74 2019
082 04 $a519.2$223
100 1 $aStewart, Ian,$d1945-$eauthor.
245 10 $aDo dice play God? :$bthe mathematics of uncertainty /$cIan Stewart.
264 1 $aLondon :$bProfile Books Ltd.,$c2019.
264 4 $c©2019
300 $a292 pages :$billustrations ;$c24 cm
336 $atext$2rdacontent
336 $astill image$2rdacontent
337 $aunmediated$2rdamedia
338 $avolume$2rdacarrier
504 $aIncludes bibliographical references and index.
520 $aUncertainty 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.
650 0 $aProbabilities$vPopular works.
650 0 $aChaotic behavior in systems$vPopular works.
650 7 $aChaotic behavior in systems.$2fast$0(OCoLC)fst00852171
650 7 $aProbabilities.$2fast$0(OCoLC)fst01077737
655 7 $aPopular works.$2fast$0(OCoLC)fst01423846
776 08 $iebook version :$z9781782834014
852 00 $bsci$hQA273$i.S74 2019g