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Chance

The Life of Games & the Game of Life

  • Book
  • © 2008

Overview

Authors:
  1. Joaquim P. Marques de Sá

    1. Fac. Engenharia, Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal

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  • Unique book on how probability affects our everyday lives

  • Includes many easy-to-follow mathematical examples

  • Reveals the likelihood of the unlikely!

  • Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

  • 6201 Accesses

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Table of contents (10 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages I-XII
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  2. Probabilities and Games of Chance

    Pages 1-24

  3. Amazing Conditions

    Pages 25-43

  4. Expecting to Win

    Pages 45-65

  5. The Wonderful Curve

    Pages 67-91

  6. Probable Inferences

    Pages 93-106

  7. Fortune and Ruin

    Pages 107-123

  8. The Nature of Chance

    Pages 125-151

  9. Noisy Irregularities

    Pages 153-173

  10. Chance and Order

    Pages 175-197

  11. Living with Chance

    Pages 199-214

  12. Back Matter

    Pages 215-224
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Keywords

About this book

Our lives are immersed in a sea of chance. Everyone’s existence is a meeting point of a multitude of accidents. The origin of the word ‘chance’ is usually traced back to the vulgar Latin word ‘cadentia’, meaning a befalling by fortuitous circumstances, with no knowable or determinable causes. The Roman philosopher Cicero clearly expressed the idea of ‘chance’ in his work De Divinatione: For we do not apply the words ‘chance’, ‘luck’, ‘accident’ or ‘casualty’ except toanevent which hassooccurredorhappened that it either might not have occurred at all, or might have occurred in any other way. 2.VI.15. For if a thing that is going to happen, may happen in one way or another, indi?erently, chance is predominant; but things that happen by chance cannot be certain. 2.IX.24. Ina certain sensechance isthespiceoflife. Iftherewerenophenomena with unforeseeable outcomes, phenomena with an element of chance, all temporal cause–e?ect sequences would be completely deterministic.

Reviews

From the reviews:

"This book gives a delightful overview of Probability, that is Chance, as a phenomenon in both games and life. … I found this book to be filled with example that I will use in class the next time I teach Probability. … The author keeps the mathematical prerequisites to a minimum, so that this book would be accessible to an undergraduate … . I would consider using it as a text for a student who wanted to do an independent study of probability theory." (Barbara E. Reynolds, MathDL, July, 2008)

"This book on chance is a translation of the 2006 Portuguese original. … it may be read by almost anybody who is interested in the subject of chance." (A. N. Philippou, Mathematical Reviews, Issue 2009 a)

Authors and Affiliations

  • Fac. Engenharia, Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Joaquim P. Marques de Sá

About the author

J.P. Marques de Sá is Full Professor at the Engineering Faculty of the University of Porto. He is chairman of the Signal Processing Group of the Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Porto. His research interests are in the areas of Physiological Signal Analysis, Pattern Recognition and Neural Networks. He is a reviewer for several scientific journals and chairman of the "Summer School on Neural Networks" annually held at Porto. He is author of six books, four in Portuguese and two in English.

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