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Taking Chances: Winning with Probability | 
 enlarge | Author: John Haigh
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy New: $13.66
You Save: $6.29 (32%)
New (19) Used (7) from $8.93
Avg. Customer Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 313355
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 0.9
ISBN: 0198526636
Dewey Decimal Number: 519.2
EAN: 9780198526636
ASIN: 0198526636
Publication Date: August 28, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New, Perfect Condition, Please allow 4-14 business days for delivery. 100% Money Back Guarantee, Over 1,000,000 customers served.
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
Most of us enjoy pleasant surprises and know that many of life's greatest rewards are obtained by taking chances. This is true whether we are playing the lottery or deciding whether or not to buy flowers when we are unsure if it might be our girlfriend's birthday. So, if you enjoy taking chances and winning--and it's a safe bet that you do--this book helps you do so in a more intelligent way. John Haigh is Reader in Mathematics at Sussex University, and his book covers a remarkably large number of topics. He tells you how to take chances playing the football pools and about the role of chance in sports such as tennis, golf, and soccer. What points in tennis are most important? If a soccer player gets a yellow card in 10 percent of games and is suspended for one game whenever he has accumulated two yellow cards, how often is he suspended? What is the chance that a team that scores the first goal goes on to win? He also writes about casino games, bridge, and Monopoly, explaining why orange is the best color of Monopoly property to own. The book is practical rather than theoretical. It is written for anyone with a curious mind, aged perhaps 16 and up. It is not a textbook, but introduces concepts, such as random walk and game theory, that are familiar to professional mathematicians. There are technical appendices and test-yourself quizzes for readers who want to explore more. A bonus is advice on the lottery. However, with typical vividness, he cautions that if the lottery had begun with the ancient druids, and your ancestors had bought 50 tickets every week for the last 5000 years, then by now your family could expect to have won the jackpot just once! --Richard Weber, Amazon.co.uk
Product Description
Taking Chances presents an entertaining and fascinating exploration of probability, revealing traps and fallacies in the field. It describes and analyzes a remarkable variety of situations where chance plays a role, including football pools, the Lottery, TV games, sport, cards, roulette, coins, and dice. The book guides the reader round common pitfalls, demonstrates how to make better informed decisions, and shows where the odds can be unexpectedly in your favor. This new edition has been fully updated, and includes information on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" and "The Weakest Link", plus a new chapter on Probability for Lawyers.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Best broad introduction to probability for real world games May 27, 2007
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
There are many textbooks on college-level mathematical probability, but a smaller number of what I call "textbooks lite" aimed at a reader who is willing to work to learn some interesting parts of a subject. This wonderful book teaches the basic calculations in mathematical probability, but with a combination of breadth and concreteness unrivaled by any other book I know. The book consists of short sections, each giving verbal discussion of problems involving probability, games of chance and related material, and deriving solutions using only arithmetic and occasional elementary combinatorics and algebra. It covers an impressive breadth of topics: lotteries, dice and card games, casino games, TV show games, racetrack betting, some game theory (Prisoners Dilemma, Hawk-Dove games, Male-Female reproductive strategies), combined with the basic laws of probability and the familiar birthday and coupon collector's problems. Part of the content is distinctly British rather than American (cricket and snooker; premium bonds; the particular TV shows). In addition to familiar types of elementary probability calculations such as the craps example, there are more elaborate stories and calculations involving strategies as games progress. I particularly like the chapter giving a gentle yet entertaining introduction to two-person game theory.
 Loose thinking can cost money... December 19, 2004
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
While the book is mainly written on probability in games, which has already been covered in many books, the author coveres the basics of probability and coin tossing very nicely. He also covers the theory of dices thoroughly and approaches "Games with few choices" (Game Theory) with great enthusiasm. Finally the chapter "Probability for Lawyers" with it's terms such as the prosecutors fallacy and the defence attorne's fallacy are a must read for every person interested in the fascinating subject of probabiliy. PS: second edition covers now Bayes's theorem (previous readers criticised the author of missing this important theory in the first issue)
Taking Chances September 9, 2000
9 out of 9 found this review helpful
This is a very practical book on probability using common games (cards, dice, coin-toss, etc.) as examples. Explanations are thorough without being too technical. The appendices go into more mathematical detail for those so inclined. The author is British so everything has that slant (money in pounds and pence, Grand National, and so on), but that's not a problem. There's a lot of information packed into the 330 pages of this paperback since the type is fairly small.
You bet June 27, 2000
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
An excellent account of probability theory. Whilst definitely geared towards gambling it also sheds new light on some fundamental probability topics. The text sometimes does get a little numerical - at the expense of the theoretical - but this is not necessarily a bad thing. The only question I have about the book is why is there no mention of Bayes? Surely a fundamental contributor to probability theory.
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