Reviews of non-technical books relating to Probability

These reviews were originally created for my course Probability and the Real World but may be of wider interest. Suggestions for additional books are welcome. Of course there are many books on "mathematics in general" or "statistics in general", but the list concentrates more specifically on probability. Some of these reviews appear in expanded form on amazon.com. Here is a quite separate list of my published reviews of technical monographs. I have a copy of each book, except those marked (*), many of which someone has borrowed and not returned. Grrrrrrrrr Links go to my reviews of the books. Within each category, books are ordered according to some combination of suitability for STAT 157 students, suitability for the general reader, and my personal preferences. A few good books are listed in two categories. Here is a short article (from 2010) giving some reflections on all this material. Popular Science style general accounts

Silver, Nate. The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail but Some Don't. Penguin Press, 2012. Senn, Stephen. Dicing With Death. Chance, risk and health. Cambridge University Press, 2003. Bernstein, Peter L. Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk. Wiley, 1996. (*) Rosenthal, Jeffrey S. Struck by Lightning: the curious world of probabilities. Joseph Henry Press, 2006. Holland, Bart K. What are the Chances? Voodoo deaths, office gossip and other adventures in probability. Johns Hopkins, 2002. Kaplan, Michael and Kaplan, Ellen. Chances Are: Adventures in Probability. Viking, 2006. Everitt, Brian S. Chance Rules: An informal guide to probability, risk and statistics. Springer; 2nd edition, 2008. Peterson, Ivars. The Jungles of Randomness. Wiley, 1998. Mlodinow, Leonard. The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives. Pantheon, 2008. Ekeland, Ivar. The Broken Dice, and other mathematical tales of chance. University of Chicago Press, 1993.

Tsonis, Anastasios A. Randomnicity: Rules and randomness in the realm of the infinite. Imperial College Press, 2008. (*) Bennett, Deborah J. Randomness. Harvard University Press, 1999. Aczel, Amir D. Chance. A guide to gambling, love, the stock market, and just about everything else. Thunder's Mouth Press, 2004.

Sports and Gaming

Haigh, John. Taking Chances. Oxford University Press, 1999. Winston, Wayne L. Mathletics: How gamblers, managers, and sports enthusiasts use mathematics in baseball, basketball, and football. Princeton University Press, 2009. (*) Albert, Jim and Bennett, Jay. Curve Ball: Baseball, Statistics and the Role of Chance in the Game. Copernicus Books, 2001. (*) Werthamer N. Richard. Risk and Reward: The Science of Casino Blackjack. Springer, 2009. Henze, Norbert and Riedwyl, Hans. How to Win More: strategies for increasing a lottery win. A.K. Peters, 1998. (*) Skiena, Steven S. Calculated Bets. Cambridge University Press, 2001. Ross, Ken. A Mathematician at the Ballpark. Odds and probabilities for baseball fans. Pi Press, 2004. Orkin, Mike. What Are The Odds? Chance in everyday life. W.H. Freeman, 2000. Packel, Edward W. The Mathematics of Games and Gambling. Mathematical Assoc. America, 1981.

Stock Market and Finance

Malkiel, Burton Gordon. A Random Walk Down Wall Street. Norton, 2003 (original 1975). Brown, Aaron. Red-Blooded Risk: The Secret History of Wall Street. Wiley, 2011. Shiller, Robert J. Irrational Exuberance. Princeton University Press, 2005 (original 2001). Shiller, Robert J. The New Financial Order. Princeton University Press, 2003. Poundstone, William. Fortune's Formula. Hill and Wang, 2005. Swensen, David F. Unconventional Success: a fundamental approach to personal investment. Free Press, 2005. Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in the Markets and in Life. Texere, 2001.

Paulos, John A. A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market. Basic Books, 2003.

Risks

Ropeik, David and Gray, George. Risk. A practical guide for deciding what's really safe and what's really dangerous in the world around you. Houghton Mifflin, 2002. Ropeik, David. How Risky Is It, Really?. Why our fears don't always match the facts. McGraw-Hill, 2010. Bostrom, N. and Cirkovic. M. (Editors). Global Catastrophic Risks. Oxford University Press, 2008. Walsh, James. True Odds. How risk affects your everyday life. Silver Lake, 1998. Gardner, Dan. Risk. The science and politics of fear. Virgin, 2008.

Everyday Life

Makridakis, Spyros and Hogarth, Robin and Gaba, Anil. Dance with Chance: Making luck work for you. Oneworld, 2009. Rescher, Nicholas. Luck: the brilliant randomness of everyday life. University of Pittsburg Press, 1995. Wiseman, Richard. The Luck Factor. Hyperion, 2003. (*) Siskin, Bernard et al. What Are The Chances? Risks, odds and likelihoods in everyday life. Plume, 1990. Weaver, Jefferson H. What are the Odds? The chances of extraordinary events in everyday life. Promethius, 2001.

Evolution

Dawkins, Richard. Climbing Mount Improbable. Norton, 1997. Kauffman, Stuart A. The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution. Oxford University Press, 1993. Ward, Peter Douglas and Brownlee, Donald. Rare Earth: why complex life is uncommon in the universe. Copernicus 2000.

Society and Social Networks

Gladwell, Malcolm. The Tipping Point: How little things can make a big difference. Little, Brown 2000. Taleb, Nassim Nicholas. The Black Swan: The impact of the highly improbable. Random House, 2007.

Brenner, Reuven and Brenner, Gabrielle and Brown, Aaron. A World of Chance: Betting on religion, games, Wall Street. Cambridge University Press, 2008. Ball, Philip. Critical Mass: How one thing leads to another. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004. Miller, John H. and Page, Scott E. Complex Adaptive Systems: An introduction to computational models of social life. Princeton University Press, 2007. Watts, Duncan J. Six Degrees. The science of a connected age. W.W. Norton, 2003.

Psychology of Probability

Ariely, Dan. Predictably Irrational. HarperCollins, 2008. Nickerson, Raymond S. Cognition and Chance. The psychology of probabilistic reasoning. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004. Mazur, Joesph. What's Luck Got to Do with It?: The history, mathematics, and psychology of the gambler's illusion, Princeton University Press, 2010.

Philosophy of Probability

Hacking, Ian. An Introduction to Probability and Inductive Logic. Cambridge University Press, 2001. Floridi, Luciano. Information: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2010. Lindley, Dennis V. Understanding Uncertainty. Wiley, 2006. Burdzy, Krzystof. The Search for Certainty: On the clash of science and philosophy of probability. World Scientific, 2009. Kyburg, Henry E. and Thalos, Mariam (Eds.) Probability Is the Very Guide of Life: the philosophical uses of chance. Open Court, 2003.

Textbooks Lite

Haigh, John. Taking Chances. Oxford University Press, 1999. Grinstead, Charles M., Peterson, William P. and Snell, J. Laurie. Probability Tales. American Mathematical Society, 2011. Marques de Sa, J.P. Chance: the life of games and the game of life. Springer, 2008. Rosenthal, Jeffrey S. Struck by Lightning: the curious world of probabilities. Joseph Henry Press, 2006.

Starbird, Michael. What are the Chances? Probability made clear. The Teaching Company, Chantilly VA, 2006. Dworsky, Lawrence. Probably Not: Future prediction Using probability and statistical inference. Wiley, 2008. Olofsson, Peter. Probabilities: the little numbers that rule our lives. Wiley, 2007. Weaver, Warren. Lady Luck. The theory of probability. Dover, 1982 (original 1963). Woolfson, Michael M. Everyday Probability and Statistics: Health, elections, gambling and war. World Scientific, 2008. Frey, Bruce. Statistics Hacks: Tips & tools for measuring the world and beating the odds. O'Reilly, 2006. Levinson, Horace C. Chance, Luck and Statistics. Dover, 1963 (original 1939).

Science Topics

Ruhla, Charles. The Physics of Chance. Oxford University Press, 1992. Coles, Peter. From Cosmos to Chaos: The science of unpredictability. Oxford University Press, 2006. Ruelle, David. Chance and Chaos. Princeton University Press, 1991. Eigen, Manfred and Winkler, Ruthild. Laws of the Game : How the principles of nature govern chance. Princeton University Press, 1993 (original 1975). Morris, S. Brent. Magic Tricks, Card Shuffling and Dynamic Computer memories. Mathematical Association of America, 1998. (*) Rastrigin, Leonard. This Chancy, Chancy, Chancy World. Mir, Moscow, 1986. (*) Strevens, Michael. Bigger than Chaos: Understanding complexity through Probability. Harvard University Press, 2003. Puente, Carlos E. Treasures inside the Bell: Hidden order in chance. World Scientific, 2003. Beltrami, Edward. What is Random? Chance and Order in Mathematics and Life. Copernicus, 1999.

Game Theory

Fisher, Len. Rock, Paper, Scissors: Game Theory in Everyday Life. Basic Books, 2008. Bewersdorff, Jorg. Luck, Logic, and White Lies: The Mathematics of Games. A.K. Peters, 2005

Theology and Metaphysics

Bartholomew, David J. God, Chance and Purpose: Can God Have It Both Ways? Cambridge University Press, 2008. Schoenborn, Cardinal Christoph. Chance or Purpose? Creation, evolution and a rational faith. Ignatius Press, 2007. Unwin, Stephen D. The Probability of God. Crown Forum, 2003. Wright, Wister C. Consciousness and the Probability of Being. Stochastic Books, 2005.

History of Probability

David, F.N. Games, Gods and Gambling: a history of probability and statistical ideas. Dover, 1998 (original 1962). Devlin, K. The Unfinished Game: Pascal, Fermat, and the SeventeenthCentury Letter that Made the World Modern. Basic Books, 2008. Szpiro, George P. Pricing the Future: Finance, Physics, and the 300year Journey to the Black-Scholes Equation. Basic Books, 2011. Gorroochurn, Prakash. Classic Problems of Probability. Wiley, 2012. McGrayne, Sharon Bertsch. The Theory That Would Not Die: How Bayes' rule cracked the Enigma Code, hunted down Russian submarines, and emerged triumphant from two centuries of controversy.Yale University Press, 2011. and list of more scholarly works.

Statistics

Ziliak, Stephen and McCloskey, Deirdre. The Cult of Statistical Significance. Unversity of Michigan Press, 2008. Savage, Sam L. The Flaw of Averages: Why we underestimate risk in the face of uncertainty. Wiley, 2009.

Miscellaneous

Rosenhouse, Jason. The Monty Hall Problem. Oxford University Press, 2009. Stewart, Ian. Letters to a Young Mathematician. Perseus, 2006. Simon, Marc T. Your Intuition is Wrong! Dorrance, 1996.