Gambling captures as nothing else the drama of the "long eighteenth century" between the age of religious wars and the age of revolutions. The society that was confronted with games of chance pursued as commercial ventures also came to grips with unprecedented social mobility, floated by new wealth from new sources created fortunes from trade in sugar, cotton, ivory, silk, tea, or enslaved human beings. Likewise, play for money was prominent in the public imagination as money itself, deployed through an ever expanding and ever more sophisticated range of mechanisms, increasingly invaded public awareness, as when prospective spouses in period fiction were rated in terms of annual income as if they were municipal bonds. Similarly, the archetypal figure of the gambler captured the imagination of the public in fiction, media, and politics. At the same time, new interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics - encouraged and bankrolled by those in power - fostered a new and unprecedented appreciation for mathematical probability and its applications, opening the possibility that games of chance might be pursued as a profitable commercial venture. The Gambling Century focuses like no previous work on those who enabled, facilitated, and profited from gambling, as well as on efforts to regulate or outlaw it. Using extensive archival material as well as printed sources, it follows its subjects from the Court to the coffeehouse, to private clubs and "at homes" in townhouses, all of which prefigure that quintessentially modern gambling space, the casino.

A toddler striving to be perfect learns to accept that everyone makes mistakes.

Advanced maths students have been waiting for this, the third edition of a text that deals with one of the fundamentals of their field. This book contains a systematic treatment of probability from the ground up, starting with intuitive ideas and gradually developing more sophisticated subjects, such as random walks and the Kalman-Bucy filter. Examples are discussed in detail, and there are a large number of exercises. This third edition contains new problems and exercises, new proofs, expanded material on financial mathematics, financial engineering, and mathematical statistics, and a final chapter on the history of probability theory.

What is the nature of human wisdom? For many, the ideal image of sapiens is a heavenly one: an omniscient God, a Laplacean demon, a supercomputer, or a fully consistent logical system. Gerd Gigerenzer argues, in contrast, that there are more efficient tools than logic in our minds, which he calls fast and frugal heuristics. These adaptive tools work in a world where the present is only partially known and the future is uncertain. Here, rationality is not logical but ecological, and this volume shows how this insight can help remedy even the widespread problem of statistical innumeracy.RATIONALITY FOR MORTALS (which follows on a previous collection, ADAPTIVE THINKING, also published by OUP) presents Gigerenzer's most recent articles, revised and updated where appropriate, together with a newly written introduction.

This Set Contains: Continuous Multivariate Distributions, Volume 1, Models and Applications, 2nd Edition by Samuel Kotz, N. Balakrishnan and Normal L. Johnson Continuous Univariate Distributions, Volume 1, 2nd Edition by Samuel Kotz, N. Balakrishnan and Normal L. Johnson Continuous Univariate Distributions, Volume 2, 2nd Edition by Samuel Kotz, N. Balakrishnan and Normal L. Johnson Discrete Multivariate Distributions by Samuel Kotz, N. Balakrishnan and Normal L. Johnson Univariate Discrete Distributions, 3rd Edition by Samuel Kotz, N. Balakrishnan and Normal L. Johnson Discover the latest advances in discrete distributions theory The Third Edition of the critically acclaimed Univariate Discrete Distributions provides a self-contained, systematic treatment of the theory, derivation, and application of probability distributions for count data. Generalized zeta-function and q-series distributions have been added and are covered in detail. New families of distributions, including Lagrangian-type distributions, are integrated into this thoroughly revised and updated text. Additional applications of univariate discrete distributions are explored to demonstrate the flexibility of this powerful method. A thorough survey of recent statistical literature draws attention to many new distributions and results for the classical distributions. Approximately 450 new references along with several new sections are introduced to reflect the current literature and knowledge of discrete distributions. Beginning with mathematical, probability, and statistical fundamentals, the authors provide clear coverage of the key topics in the field, including: Families of discrete distributions Binomial distribution Poisson distribution Negative binomial distribution Hypergeometric distributions Logarithmic and Lagrangian distributions Mixture distributions Stopped-sum distributions Matching, occupancy, runs, and q-series distributions Parametric regression models and miscellanea Emphasis continues to be placed on the increasing relevance of Bayesian inference to discrete distribution, especially with regard to the binomial and Poisson distributions. New derivations of discrete distributions via stochastic processes and random walks are introduced without unnecessarily complex discussions of stochastic processes. Throughout the Third Edition, extensive information has been added to reflect the new role of computer-based applications. With its thorough coverage and balanced presentation of theory and application, this is an excellent and essential reference for statisticians and mathematicians.