A Waterstones Best Popular Science Book of 2023'Delightfully clear and vivid to read...A splendid book! Philip Pullman'Absolutely fascinating' James O'Brien'An exceptional book - readable, funny and more needed than ever' Dr Chris van Tulleken, bestselling author of Ultra-Processed PeopleAre you more likely to become a professional footballer if your surname is Ball?· How can you be one hundred per cent sure you will win a bet?· Why did so many Pompeiians stay put while Mount Vesuvius was erupting?· How do you prevent a nuclear war?Ever since the dawn of human civilisation, we have been trying to make predictions about what's in store for us. We do this on a personal level, so that we can get on with our lives efficiently (should I hang my laundry out to dry, or will it rain?). But we also have to predict on a much larger scale, often for the good of our broader society (how can we spot economic downturns or prevent terrorist attacks?). For just as long, we have been getting it wrong. From religious oracles to weather forecasters, and from politicians to economists, we are subjected to poor predictions all the time. Our job is to separate the good from the bad. Unfortunately, the foibles of our own biology - the biases that ultimately make us human - can let us down when it comes to making rational inferences about the world around us. And that can have disastrous consequences.How to Expect the Unexpected will teach you how and why predictions go wrong, help you to spot phony forecasts and give you a better chance of getting your own predictions correct.
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A fascinating exploration of how we can make better, accessible, mathematically-informed predictions about the world around us.
A vivid, wide-ranging and delightful guide to the light and the dark side of prediction
A vivid, wide-ranging and delightful guide to the light and the dark side of prediction - Tim Harford, bestselling author of How to Make the World Add UpKit Yates presents maths as it should be taught to everyone: accessible, fun, stimulating, and deeply relevant to our lives. Spend some time with this book and you're likely to make better judgements and decisions, to see through the charlatans and snake-oil salespeople - and perhaps even to fool yourself a little less. - Philip Ball, author of the award-winning Critical MassFascinating and fun. From the everyday to global challenges, Kit Yates explores how changing your mind - so often thought to be a weakness - is the best life skill we can all acquire. A brilliant book - Professor Alice RobertsYates' writing is a beacon of clarity sorely needed in a complicated and confusing world. How do we overcome our biases, understand coincidences or tackle the unreliability of our intuition? With bountiful familiar examples, he effortlessly overturns so many of our deep-rooted wrong-headed notions gently and persuasively. I'll be quoting from this book - Jim Al-Khalili
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781529408676
Publisert
2023-07-06
Utgiver
Vendor
Quercus Publishing
Vekt
680 gr
Høyde
236 mm
Bredde
158 mm
Dybde
46 mm
Aldersnivå
G, 01
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Innbundet
Antall sider
448

Forfatter

Biographical note

Kit Yates is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Mathematical Sciences and co-director of the Centre for Mathematical Biology at the University of Bath. He completed his PhD in mathematics at the University of Oxford in 2011. He is the author of The Maths of Life and Death, which was a Sunday Times Science Book of the Year. This is his second book.