Non-technical books relating to Probability
This list is created for my course
STAT 157: Seminar: From Undergraduate Probability Theory
to the Real World (Spring 2006)
but may be of wider interest.
Suggestions for additional books are welcome.
Of course there are many books on "mathematics in general" or
"statistics in general", but the list concentrates more specifically on probability.
Some of these reviews appear in expanded form on
amazon.com.
Here is a quite separate list of my published
reviews of technical monographs.
I have a copy of each book, except those marked (*),
many of
which someone has borrowed and not returned.
Links go to my brief description of the books.
Within each category, books are ordered according to
some combination of suitability for STAT 157 students, suitability for the general
reader, and my personal preferences.
A few good books are listed in two categories.
- Senn, Stephen.
Dicing With Death.
Chance, risk and health.
Cambridge University Press, 2003.
- Bernstein, Peter L.
Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk.
Wiley, 1996.
- Rosenthal, Jeffrey S.
Struck by Lightning: the curious world of probabilities.
Joseph Henry Press, 2006.
- Holland, Bart K.
What are the Chances?
Voodoo deaths, office gossip and other adventures in probability.
Johns Hopkins, 2002.
- Kaplan, Michael and Kaplan, Ellen.
Chances Are: Adventures in Probability.
Viking, 2006.
- Peterson, Ivars.
The Jungles of Randomness.
Wiley, 1998.
-
Mlodinow, Leonard.
The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives.
Pantheon, 2008.
- Ekeland, Ivar.
The Broken Dice, and other mathematical tales of chance.
University of Chicago Press, 1993.
- (*) Bennett, Deborah J.
Randomness.
Harvard University Press, 1999.
- (*) Everitt, Brian S.
Chance Rules.
Copernicus, 1999.
- Aczel, Amir D.
Chance. A guide to gambling, love, the stock market, and just about everything else.
Thunder's Mouth Press, 2004.
- Haigh, John.
Taking Chances.
Oxford University Press, 1999.
- (*) Albert, Jim and Bennett, Jay.
Curve Ball: Baseball, Statistics and the Role of Chance in
the Game.
Copernicus Books, 2001.
- Henze, Norbert and Riedwyl, Hans.
How to Win More: strategies for increasing a lottery win.
A.K. Peters, 1998.
- (*) Skiena, Steven S.
Calculated Bets.
Cambridge University Press, 2001.
- Ross, Ken.
A Mathematician at the Ballpark.
Odds and probabilities for baseball fans.
Pi Press, 2004.
- Orkin, Mike.
What Are The Odds?
Chance in everyday life.
W.H. Freeman, 2000.
- Packel, Edward W.
The Mathematics of Games and Gambling.
Mathematical Assoc. America, 1981.
- Malkiel, Burton Gordon.
A Random Walk Down Wall Street.
Norton, 2003 (original 1975).
- Shiller, Robert J.
Irrational Exuberance.
Princeton University Press, 2005 (original 2001).
- Shiller, Robert J.
The New Financial Order.
Princeton University Press, 2003.
- Poundstone, William.
Fortune's Formula.
Hill and Wang, 2005.
- Swensen, David F.
Unconventional Success: a fundamental approach to personal investment.
Free Press, 2005.
- Taleb, Nassim Nicholas.
Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in the Markets and in
Life.
Texere, 2001.
- Paulos, John A.
A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market.
Basic Books, 2003.
-
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.
-
Walsh, James.
True Odds. How risk affects your everyday life.
Silver Lake, 1998.
- Rescher, Nicholas.
Luck: the brilliant randomness of everyday life.
University of Pittsburg Press, 1995.
- Wiseman, Richard.
The Luck Factor.
Hyperion, 2003.
-
(*)
Siskin, Bernard et al.
What Are The Chances?
Risks, odds and likelihoods in everyday life.
Plume, 1990.
-
Weaver, Jefferson H.
What are the Odds?
The chances of extraordinary events in everyday life.
Promethius, 2001.
- Dawkins, Richard.
Climbing Mount Improbable.
Norton, 1997.
- Kauffman, Stuart A.
The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in
Evolution.
Oxford University Press, 1993.
- Ward, Peter Douglas and Brownlee, Donald.
Rare Earth: why complex life is uncommon in the universe.
Copernicus 2000.
- Gladwell, Malcolm.
The Tipping Point: How little things can make a big difference.
Little, Brown 2000.
- Philip Ball.
Critical Mass: How one thing leads to another.
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004.
- Taleb, Nassim Nicholas.
The Black Swan: The impact of the highly improbable.
Random House, 2007.
- Watts, Duncan J.
Six Degrees.
The science of a connected age.
W.W. Norton, 2003.
- Nickerson, Raymond S.
Cognition and Chance.
The psychology of probabilistic reasoning.
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2004.
-
Kyburg, Henry E. and Thalos, Mariam (Eds.)
Probability Is the Very Guide of Life: the philosophical uses of chance.
Open Court, 2003.
- Haigh, John.
Taking Chances.
Oxford University Press, 1999.
- Rosenthal, Jeffrey S.
Struck by Lightning: the curious world of probabilities.
Joseph Henry Press, 2006.
- Olofsson, Peter.
Probabilities: the little numbers that rule our lives.
Wiley, 2007.
- Weaver, Warren.
Lady Luck.
The theory of probability.
Dover, 1982 (original 1963).
- Frey, Bruce.
Statistics Hacks: Tips & tools for measuring the world and beating the odds.
O'Reilly, 2006.
- Levinson, Horace C.
Chance, Luck and Statistics.
Dover, 1963 (original 1939).
- Ruelle, David.
Chance and Chaos.
Princeton University Press, 1991.
- Morris, S. Brent.
Magic Tricks, Card Shuffling and Dynamic Computer memories.
Mathematical Association of America, 1998.
- Simon, Marc T.
Your Intuition is Wrong!
Dorrance, 1996.
- (*) Rastrigin, Leonard.
This Chancy, Chancy, Chancy World.
Mir, Moscow, 1986.
- Puente, Carlos E.
Treasures inside the Bell: Hidden order in chance.
World Scientific, 2003.
- Beltrami, Edward.
What is Random?
Chance and Order in Mathematics and Life.
Copernicus, 1999.
- Unwin, Stephen D.
The Probability of God.
Crown Forum, 2003.
- Wright, Wister C.
Consciousness and the Probability of Being.
Stochastic Books, 2005.
- David, F.N.
Games, Gods and Gambling: a history of probability and statistical ideas.
Dover, 1998 (original 1962).
- and list of more scholarly works.
- Ziliak, Stephen and McCloskey, Deirdre.
The Cult of Statistical Significance.
Unversity of Michigan Press, 2008.
- Stewart, Ian.
Letters to a Young Mathematician.
Perseus, 2006.