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LAPL Reads's Reviews > The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day
The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day
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On April 23, 1999, Fernando Tatis of the St. Louis Cardinals hit a grand slam home run against Chan Ho Park of the Dodgers. That's not an overly rare event. However, Tatis didn't hit just one grand slam off of Park. He hit TWO. And they were in the same inning. No Major League player had ever done this before and no one has done it since. The chances of being a witness to such a thing must be so high to make it unlikely that anyone would ever see it. And yet it happened.
David Hand's book "The Improbability Principle" tries to explain how such seemingly unlikely events not only do happen, they almost have to happen. Hand's "principle" is actually just his way of synthesizing several different mathematical laws of probabilities. He does an excellent job of explaining complicated topics in a clear and engaging manner.
One of the most important laws to take from the book is The Law of Truly Large Numbers. Essentially, if you give some event enough chances to occur, it will happen. So if you think someone winning the lottery twice is impossible, it isn't. People have done it. And with big jackpots. Why? Because there are a lot of lotteries in the world. There are so many that by chance one person will take home two big payouts.
There is also the Law of Near Enough. Many things that humans think are coincidences are just our way of drawing parallels between things that are close. Say that I know the value of pi to 20 digits. You know it to 10 digits. We both think we know the value of pi. But we don't both know the exact same number. But for most people it's near enough.
Hand also mentions probability levers. Certain outside influences can change the probability of an event occurring. In the case of Tatis' two grand slams, he was playing in an era when there were many home runs hit. He was also facing the same pitcher twice and he was tiring as he was throwing many more pitches than normal. Both of those factors made the two grand slam home runs a bit more likely, albeit still highly unusual.
Our brains are trained to look for patterns and coincidences it seems. But our brains aren't as well trained at figuring out probabilities. We go to casinos and play roulette and bet on numbers that haven't come up recently because "they're due." Basketball players keep passing the ball to a teammate who may have made two shots in a row because "he has a hot hand." But, these can all just be random variations. It just happens.
The Improbability Principle may make you think that everything is random. Weird coincidences may seem a little less special, but you may also feel special knowing the reason why that is so.
Reviewed by Bob Timmermann, Senior Librarian, Science, Technology & Patents Dept
David Hand's book "The Improbability Principle" tries to explain how such seemingly unlikely events not only do happen, they almost have to happen. Hand's "principle" is actually just his way of synthesizing several different mathematical laws of probabilities. He does an excellent job of explaining complicated topics in a clear and engaging manner.
One of the most important laws to take from the book is The Law of Truly Large Numbers. Essentially, if you give some event enough chances to occur, it will happen. So if you think someone winning the lottery twice is impossible, it isn't. People have done it. And with big jackpots. Why? Because there are a lot of lotteries in the world. There are so many that by chance one person will take home two big payouts.
There is also the Law of Near Enough. Many things that humans think are coincidences are just our way of drawing parallels between things that are close. Say that I know the value of pi to 20 digits. You know it to 10 digits. We both think we know the value of pi. But we don't both know the exact same number. But for most people it's near enough.
Hand also mentions probability levers. Certain outside influences can change the probability of an event occurring. In the case of Tatis' two grand slams, he was playing in an era when there were many home runs hit. He was also facing the same pitcher twice and he was tiring as he was throwing many more pitches than normal. Both of those factors made the two grand slam home runs a bit more likely, albeit still highly unusual.
Our brains are trained to look for patterns and coincidences it seems. But our brains aren't as well trained at figuring out probabilities. We go to casinos and play roulette and bet on numbers that haven't come up recently because "they're due." Basketball players keep passing the ball to a teammate who may have made two shots in a row because "he has a hot hand." But, these can all just be random variations. It just happens.
The Improbability Principle may make you think that everything is random. Weird coincidences may seem a little less special, but you may also feel special knowing the reason why that is so.
Reviewed by Bob Timmermann, Senior Librarian, Science, Technology & Patents Dept
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Started Reading
February 24, 2014
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February 24, 2014
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