Real-World Probability Books: Everyday Life
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.
A wonderful reference work, and an antidote to the "scare of the week" that the media continually inflict upon us.
Has short sections on each of 48 risks
(e.g. indoor air pollution; pesticides; firearms; X-rays; caffeine; breast implants)
containing data and the relevant scientific knowledge, summarized by
two scales of
"likelihood of being affected"
and
"seriousness of being affected".
Walsh, James.
True Odds. How risk affects your everyday life.
Silver Lake, 1998.
Structured around 16 particular topics, from
concrete concerns of individuals
(violent crime; cell phones and brain cancer; secondhand smoke) to more general topics
(moral hazard of insurance; lotteries are a tax on the stupid). A main focus is on
the interaction between scientific data, media reporting, legislation promoted by
interest groups, and regulation by government agencies. By presenting these case
studies from recent history (1975-1995), the author provides an insightful overview
of the real-world interplay of the scientific, psychological and political aspects
of dealing with risk. This book is implicitly a well-justified polemic in favor of
rational quantatitive risk assessment and against media scares, environmental
extremist lawyers and inflexible "command and control" bureaucracy.
Rescher, Nicholas.
Luck: the brilliant randomness of everyday life.
University of Pittsburg Press, 1995.
A philosopher considers what luck is.
A good rhetorical style in many contexts is to start by carefully describing
some obvious matters for comparison with subsequent analysis of non-obvious matters.
The ``everyday life" half of this book gives the former without the latter.
Amongst the few non-obvious aspects is an attempt to distinguish between
luck, chance, fate and fortune, and a classification of (un)lucky events into
windfalls, lost opportunities, accidents, narrow escapes, coincidences,
consequence-laden mistakes in identification, fortuitous encounters, and anomalies.
But no argument that this is more useful or less arbitrary than any other
classification one might devise.
Discussion illustrated by hypothetical examples and anecdotes rather than data.
Bottom line precepts
(be realistic in judgements; be realistic in expectations; be prudently adventuresome;
be cautiously optimistic)
hardly count as insight.
Brief chapters on history (Gataker (1600s) on when drawing lots is theologically permissible) and morality
are more professional and interesting.
Overall, the book contains rational discussion which, while not getting anywhere in particular,
provides starting points for possible explorations of more concrete aspects of luck.
Wiseman, Richard.
The Luck Factor.
Hyperion, 2003.
Annoying self-help pop psych style, though based on
academic research.
Compares people who self-describe as lucky or unlucky, and shows this
is associated with a range of other aspects of positive or negative attitudes to life.
Well duh.
Their concluding principles?
Maximize chance opportunities, listen to your intuition,
expect good fortune, see the positive side of misfortune.
Siskin, Bernard et al.
What Are The Chances?
Risks, odds and likelihoods in everyday life.
Plume, 1990.
Statistics about people, presented as fun trivia,
without any citations.
The relevance of population statistics to ``you" is of course
usually highly questionable, as illustrated by this example.
Q: What are the chances I don't know my cholesterol level?
A: Among U.S. adults, 87% or 93%, according to surveys.
Weaver, Jefferson H.
What are the Odds?
The chances of extraordinary events in everyday life.
Promethius, 2001.
Has an odd style: an attorney-turned-author aiming
at humor but often missing.
The book addresses some conceptually interesting questions:
what are the chances you can get into Harvard? become a doctor or a lawyer or
a rock star? get a tax audit or an organ transplant?
The book quotes a fair number of interesting statistics but
doesn't treat them very seriously.
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