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"Before you know it as the years go by, you're just like other people you have seen, with all those peculiar human ailments. Just another vehicle for temper and vanity and rashness and all the rest. Who wants it? Who needs it? These things occupy the place where a man's soul should be." -- Henderson the Rain King

Saturday, January 21, 2006

Chance

Book #4 on my 2006 list was Amir Aczel's Chance: A Guide to Gambling, Love, the Stock Market and Just About Everything Else.

I found this one to be a bit disappointing. In the previous books I've read by Aczel he's taken on difficult subjects such as Fermat's Last Theorem and Entanglement and explained them in ways that anyone can understand. In this book he tackles the laws of probability, but mostly sticks to the basic concepts. I found I was already well familiar with most of the content presented (though that damned Monty Hall problem always throws me). It's not that the book is bad, but hasn't it already been written a brazillion times before (see Paulos, John Allen - Innumeracy)?

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