Chance Rules: An Informal Guide to Probability, Risk and Statistics

Abstract

A Brief History of Chance.- What Are the Chances? Assigning Probabilities.- Choice and Chance Permutations and Combinations.- Tossing Coins and Having Babies.- Rolling Dice.- Gambling for Fun: Lotteries and Football Pools.- Serious Gambling: Roulette, Cards and Horse Racing.- Balls, Birthdays and Coincidences.- Conditional Probability and the Reverend Thomas Bayes.- Puzzling Probabilities.- Taking Risks.- Statistics, Statisticians and Medicine.- Alternative Therapies#x2014 Panaceas or Placebos?.- What Does the Future Hold?.- Chance, Chaos and Chromosomes.