Chance and probability play a role in many aspects of our daily life. Some simple examples include playing the lottery to win millions of dollars and the possibility of bad weather tomorrow. However, Amir D. Aczel, author of Chance: A Guide to Gambling, Love, the Stock Market, and Just About Everything Else shows that chance and probability can be taken to an entirely different level, much more interesting.
Aczel’s book is only 160 pages long, making it easy to read without a lot of number theory and complicated math equations. The book looks like a two of hearts from a simple deck of cards, proving that the card game is an obvious place for opportunity to come into play. The deck is well designed; it’s brilliant and hard to miss. Aczel gives his readers simple equations to prove his points and the points of other mathematicians and statisticians who have studied numbers and contributed to this book, allowing people of all backgrounds to read this book and understand quite well.
Some of the many laws and theories that Amir Aczel covers are the Law of Unions, Dependence and Independence, Complements and Unions of Independent Events, Pascal’s Triangle, and the Inspection Paradox. All the laws and theories discussed are kept in simple terms and tested with well thought out examples. I won’t discuss the dozens of equations and examples from the book in this article, but I will discuss two of the most interesting theories that statisticians have proven that Aczel takes the time to discuss in the book.
Perhaps the most interesting chapter in this book is entitled “How to succeed in love (find the best apartment or adopt the best puppy”). Everyone is probably interested in how to find the right girl or boy, the best behaved puppy. , or even find a house that is not in a bad area with bad neighbors. Thanks to Aczel, now we can all make these decisions that are so important in our lives with a simple idea. Statistics show that once you have sampled about 37 percent of the available population in your current life, you have to settle for the next available person / object that is better than the ones before. When it comes to love, if you date 37 percent of all the single men or women you meet in your life, and then proceed to find someone who makes you happier than the entire 37 percent above, you should settle! This seems simple and slightly comical, but this is science, not just random theory.
Another interesting chapter deals with the probability that you have the same birthday as someone else in your environment. The first part of this chapter states that for there to be a 50 percent chance that two people in a room have the same birthday, you must take 1.2 times the square root of the number of chances to get your answer as a percent of 100. The second part of the chapter is basically the same, but it looks for a 95 percent chance rather than a 50 percent chance. The theory is the same, except that you multiply 1.6 by the square root of the number of possibilities to get your answer as a percent of 100. Aczel uses the example that if you multiply 1.2 by the square root of 365 (days in a year), you get an answer of about 23. This means that if there are 23 people together in a room, there is about a 50 percent chance that two people will have the same birthday. The results are surprising and very interesting.
Amir D. Aczel’s book may seem simple and like a quick read when inspecting the cover and front pages, but there is much more to this book than meets the eye. Aczel will have you read various portions of his book repeatedly so that you can root some of the theories he mentions in your mind. The two ideas mentioned in this article have stuck in my mind since I read the book twice and are great for conversation at the office or at a party. I recommend that you take a day or two to read this book and you will be amazed at how you will surprise your friends with your new knowledge. I rate this book 4 out of 5.