A mathematically supported, engaging read on how probabilities are frequently used, misunderstood and creatively applied to...
Hitlin, who earned a doctorate degree in political science from Vanderbilt University, explores the application of probability theory to everyday scenarios including finance, gaming and law.
Hitlin isn’t coy about his target audience for this work. This isn’t “a rigorous logical proof of probability theory nor is it a guide to calculating complicated probability problems,” he writes. “It is designed for people who are open to learning about ways to make more successful decisions in their everyday lives from a book written in non-mathematical language.” Hitlin maintains this clear, direct style and unpretentious graphical display throughout the text, interspersing quotes from notable figures such as Albert Einstein and Nils Bohr. The book is quite text-heavy, but charts and mathematical tables are sometimes balanced with friendly stock photos of dice and roulette tables. What distinguishes the work is how precisely it links seemingly dry mathematical formulas to real-life examples. In particular, the “Faulty Legal Reasoning” chapter lays out examples of court cases; in one, a defendant was convicted of murder and sentenced to jail based on the likelihood of a rare malady, sudden infant death syndrome, naturally occurring and killing two children in a given span of time. Hitlin manages to insert enough drama into the text to make it an intriguing read while simultaneously carefully laying out the mathematical evidence. For instance, the likelihood of a baby contracting SIDS was one in 8,500; in “reasoning used by the pediatrician, and accepted by the judge, the lawyers, and the jury,” the chances of two SIDS death in the same family was therefore one in 8,500 times one in 8,500. In this case, however, “subsequent statistical analysis demonstrated that after a SIDS death has occurred in a family, the chance of another SIDS death in the same family increases ten-fold,” Hitlin writes. Likewise, his studies of how colleges create formulas that allow them to admit more applicants than they actually intend to enroll is a fascinating read for anyone who has ever wondered how to strike the right balance in circumstances that are inherently unknowable. Each scenario, particularly the detailed examples, will help readers understand the scope and complexity of the world in which we live.
A mathematically supported, engaging read on how probabilities are frequently used, misunderstood and creatively applied to shape our daily lives.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: B00R1D2ENA
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: Feb. 11, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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