The Art of Uncertainty: How to Navigate Chance, Ignorance, Risk and Luck

This is a superb overview of probability theory with applications to the everyday world. It is written with the clarity and grace that distinguished the author's The Art of Statistics. A most informative and enjoyable read.

I have the authors first book, The Art of Statistics, so got this one. Enjoyed it but it was hard for me. Maybe a reader can help me: pages 49 to 50 describe a problem called Hannah's Sweets. I get that the probability of Hannah eating an orange sweet is 6/n, where n = the total number of sweets. We are told there are six orange sweets. But I don't get the probability that the second sweet she eats is 5/n-1. I get the n-1 but 5? Where does it say that the first sweet she ate was orange? I feel dumb.

Excellent overview of assessing strength of predictions. Lots of stats might put some readers off, but they need not be grasped to get the basic substance. Non-stat folk can easily understand the issues because of the examples and connections. Distinguishing between "probability" and "certainty" helps the lay-reader understand decision making and research. This book is a valuable antidote to media and other outlets that report research or decision making that tend to be simplistic and often erroneous.

Very ,very good. Highly recommended. Useful--no ,essential--if you trade any securities, or just want to idnetify what those lunatics are doing.

The book's first half presents basic probability formulas, which I learned about 50 years ago. This part includes many formulas; reading them on a Kindle device is inconvenient. I found some interesting ideas in the book's second half, starting in chapter 11. The author also suggests an original meaning of probability, but the discussion about this idea ignores the vast literature in this field. For example, the author suggests assigning probabilities to general theories (and not just events) and ignoring the paradoxes that Popper and Agassi raised against this idea. (Consider two highly corroborated inconsistent theories, such as Relativity theory and quantum mechanics. Following the rules of probability, the probability of the theory “either Relativity theory or quantum mechanics is true” turns out to be higher than 1).

It is very rare for me to find a math book that is delectable. Here is one!

This is an interesting book, and was purchased as a gift for a friend! It was delivered as promised and was well received!

It was reviewed in the WSJ, and I thought it would be of some interest. I was wrong. The book is almost 90% mathematical, using some confusing equations and in very small print.