In The Improbability Principle, the renowned statistician David J.
Hand argues that extraordinarily rare events are anything but. In fact,
they're commonplace. Not only that, we should all expect to experience a
miracle roughly once every month.
But Hand is no believer in superstitions, prophecies, or the paranormal.
His definition of miracle is thoroughly rational. No mystical or
supernatural explanation is necessary to understand why someone is lucky
enough to win the lottery twice, or is destined to be hit by lightning
three times and still survive. All we need, Hand argues, is a firm
grounding in a powerful set of laws: the laws of inevitability, of truly
large numbers, of selection, of the probability lever, and of near
enough.
Together, these constitute Hand's groundbreaking Improbability
Principle. And together, they explain why we should not be so surprised
to bump into a friend in a foreign country, or to come across the same
unfamiliar word four times in one day. Hand wrestles with seemingly less
explicable questions as well: what the Bible and Shakespeare have in
common, why financial crashes are par for the course, and why lightning
does strike the same place (and the same person) twice. Along the way,
he teaches us how to use the Improbability Principle in our own
lives--including how to cash in at a casino and how to recognize when a
medicine is truly effective.
An irresistible adventure into the laws behind chance moments and a
trusty guide for understanding the world and universe we live in, The
Improbability Principle will transform how you think about serendipity
and luck, whether it's in the world of business and finance or you're
merely sitting in your backyard, tossing a ball into the air and
wondering where it will land.
