Real-World Probability Books: Science Topics
Ruhla, Charles. The Physics of Chance. Oxford University Press, 1992.
Although more mathematical than is appropriate for the readership of these reviews,
this book is so good I can't ignore it. It takes a selection of standard topics but treats
them in a serious, careful and well written way, via a "horizontal integration" of
math theory, its meaning within physics and its experimental verification.
Topics include measurement error, the Maxwell velocity distribution for an ideal gas,
Boltzmann's statistical physics, deterministic chaos illustrated by a compass needle
undergoing forced oscillations, a detailed account of the quantum theory of interference
and an "inseparable photons" experiment.
Coles, Peter.
From Cosmos to Chaos: The science of unpredictability.
Oxford University Press, 2006.
See
my amazon.com review.
Palmer, Tim.
The Primacy of Doubt.
Basic Books, 2022.
A rather curious book, centered on the author's distinguished work
on ensemble forecasting for weather prediction and climate forecasting,
but asserting the applicability of those conceptual ideas much more broadly.
See my MAA Reviews review.
Ruelle, David.
Chance and Chaos.
Princeton University Press, 1991.
A stylistic gem, partly because (as a true mathematician) the author
writes only when he has something to say.
The core is introductory accounts of topics like
sensitivity of deterministic systems to initial conditions,
Lorenz attractors,
entropy and reversibility,
equilibrium statistical mechanics,
NP-hard algorithms and
Godel's incompleteness theorem.
While these have become staple topics of mathematical popularizers,
Ruelle manages to pick the essential point and explain in clear words
and a few equations.
Minor side topics include game theory, information theory and sexual reproduction.
Contains anecdotes (unfailingly true to my experience!)
about how physics and math research and researchers actually work
(note in particular the Physical Review paragraph)
and no-nonsense comments about philosophical significance
of the math.
Unfortunately (for my purposes here) the "probability" component is very secondary;
while each topic is somewhat related to probability, the core topics are
linked as physics not as probability, and the other topics are hardly linked at all.
Parisi, Giorgio.
In a Flight of Starlings: The Wonders of Complex Systems.
Penguin Press, 2023.
See
this review
to appear in SIAM News.
Eigen, Manfred and Winkler, Ruthild.
Laws of the Game : How the principles of nature govern chance.
Princeton University Press, 1993 (original 1975).
See
my amazon.com review.
Morris, S. Brent.
Magic Tricks, Card Shuffling and Dynamic Computer memories.
Mathematical Association of America, 1998.
The mathematics of card shuffling are related to some magic tricks with cards and to some algorithms
in computer science theory.
The book contains a lot of sophomore/junior level math, but is clearly written
and deals with interesting questions (unfortunately, not "probability" questions). OK,
finding this interesting marks me as a math nerd -- and proud of it!
Rastrigin, Leonard.
This Chancy, Chancy, Chancy World.
Mir, Moscow, 1986.
Written in earnest 1950s popular science style. Covers some
of the usual material but emphasizes topics
(signal filters, error-correcting codes, learning models, perceptron)
relating to the author's professional interest in control engineering
and random search algorithms.
Having these non-standard topics is a positive feature.
But the style tends to oscillate between overstated generalities
and too-detailled specifics with block diagrams.
Strevens, Michael.
Bigger than Chaos: Understanding complexity through Probability.
Harvard University Press, 2003.
See my amazon.com review.
Puente, Carlos E.
Treasures inside the Bell: Hidden order in chance.
World Scientific, 2003.
Misleading subtitle. Studies attractors of random dynamical systems where
for generic parameters the invariant measure is Gaussian but where for special parameter choices
one gets visually elegant deterministic sets. Great pictures, but from a mathematically specialized and
artificial model.
Beltrami, Edward.
What is Random?
Chance and Order in Mathematics and Life.
Copernicus, 2020, second edition.
See my amazon.com review.
Back to complete book list.