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.

Anders Engberg-Pedersen shows how the Napoleonic Wars inspired a new discourse on knowledge in the West. Soldiers returning from battle were forced to reconsider what it is possible to know and how decisions are made in a fog of imperfect knowledge. Chance no longer appeared exceptional but normative—a prism for understanding the modern world.

"What are the odds against winning the Lotto, The Weakest Link, or Who Wants to be a Millionaire? The answer lies in the science of probability, yet many of us are unaware of how this science works. Every day, people make judgements on a wide variety of situations where chance plays a role, including buying insurance, betting on horse-racing, following medical advice - even carrying an umbrella. In Taking Chances, John Haigh guides the reader round common pitfalls, demonstrates how to make better-informed decisions, and shows where the odds can be unexpectedly in your favour. This new edition has been fully updated, and includes information on top television shows, plus a new chapter on Probability for Lawyers."--BOOK JACKET.

After a terrible war almost extinguished humanity, the New Terran Empire rises from its own ashes.Sent on an exploratory mission to the dead worlds of the Old Empire, Commander Jared Mertz sets off into the unknown.Only the Old Empire isn't quite dead after all. Evil lurks in the dark.With everything he holds dear at stake, Jared must fight like never before. Victory means life. Defeat means death. Or worse.If you love military science fiction and grand adventure on a galaxy-spanning scale, grab "Empire of Bones" and the rest of The Empire of Bones Saga today!

Napoleon’s campaigns were the most complex military undertakings in history before the nineteenth century. But the defining battles of Austerlitz, Borodino, and Waterloo changed more than the nature of warfare. Concepts of chance, contingency, and probability became permanent fixtures in the West’s understanding of how the world works. Empire of Chance examines anew the place of war in the history of Western thought, showing how the Napoleonic Wars inspired a new discourse on knowledge. Soldiers returning from the battlefields were forced to reconsider basic questions about what it is possible to know and how decisions are made in a fog of imperfect knowledge. Artists and intellectuals came to see war as embodying modernity itself. The theory of war espoused in Carl von Clausewitz’s classic treatise responded to contemporary developments in mathematics and philosophy, and the tools for solving military problems—maps, games, and simulations—became models for how to manage chance. On the other hand, the realist novels of Balzac, Stendhal, and Tolstoy questioned whether chance and contingency could ever be described or controlled. As Anders Engberg-Pedersen makes clear, after Napoleon the state of war no longer appeared exceptional but normative. It became a prism that revealed the underlying operative logic determining the way society is ordered and unfolds.