The Story of Chance

“The Story of Chance – What’s Luck Got to Do With It?”

My new book will be available soon. Here are some highlights:

Why does a lucky lottery jackpot winner need unlucky losers?  How are the occurrences of “black swans” explained by the opportunity for such things to happen?  What is synchronicity and why did Jung invent the term?  What’s the Rashomon effect?  How is it possible that a TV pundit has predicted every stock market crash for the past thirty years? What’s the Karaoke strategy?  Can an octopus successfully pick winners of football games?  What is the “margin of error” in opinion polls?  How can you tell whether a fortune teller has psychic powers?  How do you tell the difference between luck and skill?  What’s a p-value? Is sports betting skill-based?  Was Humpty Dumpty accident-prone?  What is resemblance stereotyping and how can conditional probability help us understand it?  How did the former crypto king con himself?  Mike Orkin answers these questions and more.