Chances Are . . .

<b>A compelling journey through history mathematics and philosophy charting humanity's struggle against randomness</b> <p> Our lives are played out in the arena of chance. However little we recognize it in our day-to-day existence we are always riding the odds seeking out certainty but settling--reluctantly--for likelihood building our beliefs on the shadowy props of probability. <i>Chances Are</i> is the story of man's millennia-long search for the tools to manage the recurrent but unpredictable--to help us prevent or at least mitigate the seemingly random blows of disaster disease and injustice. In these pages we meet the brilliant individuals who developed the first abstract formulations of probability as well as the intrepid visionaries who recognized their practical applications--from gamblers to military strategists to meteorologists to medical researchers from blackjack to our own mortality. <p/></p>