Do Dice Play God?: The Mathematics of Uncertainty

A celebrated mathematician explores how math helps us make sense of the unpredictable


We would like to believe we can know things for certain. We want to be able to figure out who will win an election, if the stock market will crash, or if a suspect definitely committed a crime. But the odds are not in our favor. Life is full of uncertainty — indeed, scientific advances indicate that the universe might be fundamentally inexact — and humans are terrible at guessing. When asked to predict the ...