Customer Reviews

What Are the Odds?: The Chances of Extraordinary Events in Everyday Life

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4 star:		(2)
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This is a good book about a pretty interesting (and important) topic: probability and chance. I like the examples Weaver used and his presentation was good too.

Although he reports a lot of numbers and statistical figures (that's the point of the book), there isn't much math -- almost none, in fact. This might not be the best way to present this material if you want to understand the underlying math (one can argue it's being oversimplified) but here's the thing: most people are interested in the final numbers and the bottom line, and wouldn't mind some commentary to go along with it. This is exactly what Weaver does in this book: he presents a number of topics that most people can relate to, tells you about some interesting numbers, and provides a bit of explanation, some commentary, and a few jokes here and there.

In short you will like this book if you don't buy it expecting to get a rigorous mathematical explanation of, well, anything. Weaver never claims his book contains any math that is the least bit complicated, and so I think it's fair to say the content matches the description, and for that I give this book a good rating.

This is one of the funniest and most informative books I've ever read about one of the most mundane and potentially boring topics ever. Jefferson Hane Weaver takes a "boring as watching paint dry" subject and makes it entertaining, informative and (believe it or not) a page-turner. Basically, I learned a littel bit about "Odds" and laughed my ass off in the process.

Well Done Mr. Weaver.

I don't like to have to inspect table and graphs of quantitative information for correctness and plausibility. Because I found that this book contained several simple errors of calculation, I found it hard to trust ANY of the "facts" reported.

Furtheremore, the author acknowledged no editor. Perhaps Prometheus Books did not provide one. Be skeptical of the quality of books published by Prometheus Books.

Clifford Pickor (author), Leon Lederman (Nobelist), and Barry Parker (author) provided blurbs for this inferior book. Unfortunately, this book does nothing to counter the belief that the law is a refuge for the clever innumerate. (J. J. Waeaver, the author, is an attorney.