This book tells how quantitative ideas of chance have transformed the natural and social sciences as well as everyday life over the past three centuries. A continuous narrative connects the earliest application of probability and statistics in gambling and insurance to the most recent forays into law, medicine, polling, and baseball. Separate chapters explore the theoretical and methodological impact on biology, physics, and psychology. In contrast to the literature on the mathematical development of probability and statistics, this book centers on how these technical innovations recreated our conceptions of nature, mind, and society.
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Editorial Reviews
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"...will be useful to statisticians, philosophers, scientists and other historians of science who want to understand the roots of the probability-based statistical methods we use so widely today...The Empire of Chance is a valuable book." Science
"In contrast to the literature on the mathematical development of probablilty and statistics, this book focuses on how technical innovations remade our conceptions of nature, mind, and society. The work is aimed at historians of science and philosophers of science, but it is also directed toward scholars in other disciplines and therefore technical material is kept to a minimum." Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
"In contrast to the literature on the mathematical development of probablilty and statistics, this book focuses on how technical innovations remade our conceptions of nature, mind, and society. The work is aimed at historians of science and philosophers of science, but it is also directed toward scholars in other disciplines and therefore technical material is kept to a minimum." Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
Book Description
Connects the earliest applications of probability and statistics in gambling and insurance to the most recent applications in law, medicine, polling, and baseball as well as their impact on biology, physics and psychology.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Necessary Reading for Social Scientists,
By A. Wakefield "Partial Observer" (Indian Fortress, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Empire of Chance: How Probability Changed Science and Everyday Life (Ideas in Context) (Paperback)
Speaking as a psychological scientist, the information conveyed in this book should be essential study for all students planning to conduct social science studies and analyze them with statistics. Period. The ideas conveyed in mainstream statistical education for 21st century social scienctists is still a incoherent mash of ideas in need of serious scrutiny. An important task for every scientist to take part in, and here is a place to start questioning and improving how we design studies and draw conclusions from their results. Mathematical techniques for analysis of studies is relatively new, yet it's treated as ancient ossified dogma. Bizarre. Reading this book will clear your mind in many ways if you are this type of reader. If you're a mathematician, or already know a lot of the history behind mainstream social science and statistics, you might be interested in books that cover even more marginal territories such as those mentioned by the other reviewer. For everyone else, say, if you don't know what the Neyman-Pearson theory of statistics is, you need to get this now.
20 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Very limited discussion of differing theories of probability,
By Michael Emmett Brady "mandmbrady" (Bellflower, California ,United States) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: The Empire of Chance: How Probability Changed Science and Everyday Life (Ideas in Context) (Paperback)
Gigerenzer(G)does a B+ discussion of the particular items he is interested in covering ,such as the conflict between Neyman(Pearson)and Sir Ronald Fisher over significance levels and confidence intervals and their meaning.However, there is practically no,or a very limited,discussion of the subjectivist theory of probability(Ramsey and de Finetti)or of the logical theory of probability(John Maynard Keynes and Rudolf Carnap).A potential reader ,who is interested in either of the above mentioned approaches to probability ,is forewarned that his curiosity will not be satisfied by reading this book.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
In July of 1654 Blaise Pascal wrote to Pierre Fermat about a gambling problem which came to be known as the Problem of Points: Two players are interrupted in the midst of a game of chance, with the score uneven at that point. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
United States, Karl Pearson, Jakob Bernoulli, Daniel Bernoulli, Ludwig Boltzmann, Nicholas Bernoulli, Second World War, Cab Problem, Francis Galton, Jerzy Neyman, Francis Edgeworth, James Clerk Maxwell, Niels Bohr, Auguste Comte, Charles Darwin, Galton Laboratory, Great Britain, International Statistical Institute, John Herschel, Literary Digest, Max Planck, Richard von Mises, William Paley, Adolphe Quetelet, Claude Bernard New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
In July of 1654 Blaise Pascal wrote to Pierre Fermat about a gambling problem which came to be known as the Problem of Points: Two players are interrupted in the midst of a game of chance, with the score uneven at that point. Read the first page Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
United States, Karl Pearson, Jakob Bernoulli, Daniel Bernoulli, Ludwig Boltzmann, Nicholas Bernoulli, Second World War, Cab Problem, Francis Galton, Jerzy Neyman, Francis Edgeworth, James Clerk Maxwell, Niels Bohr, Auguste Comte, Charles Darwin, Galton Laboratory, Great Britain, International Statistical Institute, John Herschel, Literary Digest, Max Planck, Richard von Mises, William Paley, Adolphe Quetelet, Claude Bernard New!
Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 100
books:
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50
books
cite this book:
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- The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin on 5 pages
- The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection by R. A. Fisher on page 155, Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Hereditary Genius (Classics in Psychology) by Francis Galton on page 55, page 56, and Back Matter
- Natural Inheritance by Francis Galton on page 55, page 58, and Back Matter
- Evolutionary Biology by Douglas J. Futuyma on page 152, and Back Matter
See all 100 books this book cites
- Rethinking Objectivity (Post-Contemporary Interventions) by Allan Megill in Front Matter, and Back Matter
- Trust in Numbers by Theodore M. Porter in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Why the American Century? by Olivier Zunz in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- The Taming of Chance (Ideas in Context) by Ian Hacking in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Ontology of Sex (Routledge Studies in Critical Realism) by Carrie Hull in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
See all 50 books citing this book
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