What's Luck Got to Do with It?

Author: Joseph Mazur
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400834457
Category : Mathematics
Languages : en
Pages : 297

Book Description
The hazards of feeling lucky in gambling Why do so many gamblers risk it all when they know the odds of winning are against them? Why do they believe dice are "hot" in a winning streak? Why do we expect heads on a coin toss after several flips have turned up tails? What's Luck Got to Do with It? takes a lively and eye-opening look at the mathematics, history, and psychology of gambling to reveal the most widely held misconceptions about luck. It exposes the hazards of feeling lucky, and uses the mathematics of predictable outcomes to show when our chances of winning are actually good. Mathematician Joseph Mazur traces the history of gambling from the earliest known archaeological evidence of dice playing among Neolithic peoples to the first systematic mathematical studies of games of chance during the Renaissance, from government-administered lotteries to the glittering seductions of grand casinos, and on to the global economic crisis brought on by financiers' trillion-dollar bets. Using plenty of engaging anecdotes, Mazur explains the mathematics behind gambling—including the laws of probability, statistics, betting against expectations, and the law of large numbers—and describes the psychological and emotional factors that entice people to put their faith in winning that ever-elusive jackpot despite its mathematical improbability. As entertaining as it is informative, What's Luck Got to Do with It? demonstrates the pervasive nature of our belief in luck and the deceptive psychology of winning and losing. Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.

What's Luck Got to Do with It?

Author: Edward D. Kleinbard
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190943599
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Book Description
The American dream of equal opportunity is in peril. America's economic inequality is shocking, poverty threatens to become a heritable condition, and our healthcare system is crumbling despite ever increasing costs. In this thought-provoking book, Edward D. Kleinbard demonstrates how the failure to acknowledge the force of brute luck in our material lives exacerbates these crises leading to warped policy choices that impede genuine equality of opportunity for many Americans. What's Luck Got to Do with It? combines insights from economics, philosophy, and social psychology to argue for government's proper role in addressing the inequity of brute luck. Kleinbard shows how well-designed public investment can blunt the worst effects of existential bad luck that private insurance cannot reach and mitigate inequality by sharing the costs across the entire risk pool, which is to say, all of us. The benefits, as Kleinbard shares in a wealth of data, are economic as well as social a more inclusive economy, higher national income, and greater life satisfaction for millions of Americans. Like it or not, our lives and opportunities are determined largely by luck. Kleinbard shows that while we can't undo every instance of misfortune, we can offer a path to not just a fairer America, but greater economic growth, more broadly shared.

The Thing About Luck

Author: Cynthia Kadohata
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1416918825
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 279

Book Description
Just when 12-year-old Summer thinks nothing else can possibly go wrong in a year of bad luck, an emergency takes her parents to Japan, leaving Summer to care for her little brother while helping her grandmother cook and do laundry for harvest workers. Illustrations.

What's Luck Got to Do with It?

Author: Diana Mylek
Publisher: Diana Mylek
ISBN: 1452355495
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 255

Book Description
When a mild mannered preacher returns from Las Vegas with a jackpot and a new wife, odds are there is much more to the story! Trevor's mission of mercy goes awry when he drops a quarter into a slot and wins more than he bargained for. Has he fallen from grace? What happened in those lost hours? How can any of this possibly be God's plan?

The Luck Factor

Author: Richard Wiseman
Publisher: Miramax Books
ISBN: 9781401359416
Category : Self-Help
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Is luck just fate, or can you change it? A groundbreaking new scientific study of the phenomenon of luckand the ways we can bring good luck into our lives. What is luck? A psychic gift or a question of intelligence? And what is it that lucky people have that unlucky people lack? Psychologist Dr. Richard Wiseman put luck under a scientific microscope for the very first time, examining the different ways in which lucky and unlucky people think and behave. After three years of intensive interviews and experiments with over 400 volunteers, Wiseman arrived at an astonishing conclusion: Luck is something that can be learned. It is available to anyone willing to pay attention to the Four Essential Principles: . Creating Chance Opportunities . Thinking Lucky . Feeling Lucky . Denying Fate Readers can determine their capacity for luck as well as learn to change their luck through helpful exercises that appear throughout the book. Illustrated with anecdotes from the lives of the famous such as Harry Truman and Warren Buffett, The Luck Factor also richly portrays the lives of ordinary people who have been extraordinarily lucky or unlucky. Finally Dr. Wiseman gives us a look into "The Luck School" where he instructs unlucky people and also teaches lucky people how to further enhance their luck. Smart, enlightening, fun to read, and easy to follow, The Luck Factor will give you revolutionary insight into the lucky mind and could, quite simply, change your life.

What the Luck?

Author: Gary Smith
Publisher: Duckworth
ISBN: 9780715652657
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
We underestimate the importance of luck in our lives. We think too highly of the golfer who wins the British Open and, if he loses the next tournament, we speculate that he slacked off. Although the winner is surely an excellent golfer, good luck in how the ball bounced and how it rolled afterwards outside of the golfer's control also played an important role. An insufficient appreciation of chance can wreak all kinds of mischief not only in sports, but also education, medicine, business, politics and elsewhere. Perfectly natural, random variation can lead us to attach meaning to the meaningless. Freakonomics showed how economic calculations can explain seemingly counter-intuitive decision-making. Thinking, Fast and Slow, helped readers identify a host of small cognitive errors that can lead to miscalculations and irrational thought. In What the Luck? statistician and author, Gary Smith, sets himself a similar goal, and explains - in clear, understandable, and witty prose - how a statistical understanding of luck can change the way we see just about every aspect of our lives.

Luck

Author: David Wright
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 166412862X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 150

Book Description
My reason for writing this book was to have something to do after I got fired from C.W. Post. It was one in a long line of failed jobs over the years. The theme of luck grew out of the fact that through all the job losses there was Millie, my wife, and how having her in my life was a stroke of luck. All the things that happen in your life, good and bad, have a tinge of luck attached to them. By putting things into perspective I was able to cope with what was going on in my life and make peace with it. Ultimately this book is about luck; what it is and how it affects the way one handles life. I was able pour my feelings out and express what I was going through each and every day I was out of work. Writing is a good way to reflect on your life and to examine what role you have in how your life is going. I hope you find it funny as well as poignant and maybe you'll find some good luck in your life after reading it.

Soul Food

Author: Adrian Miller
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469607638
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Book Description
2014 James Beard Foundation Book Award, Reference and Scholarship Honor Book for Nonfiction, Black Caucus of the American Library Association In this insightful and eclectic history, Adrian Miller delves into the influences, ingredients, and innovations that make up the soul food tradition. Focusing each chapter on the culinary and social history of one dish--such as fried chicken, chitlins, yams, greens, and "red drinks--Miller uncovers how it got on the soul food plate and what it means for African American culture and identity. Miller argues that the story is more complex and surprising than commonly thought. Four centuries in the making, and fusing European, Native American, and West African cuisines, soul food--in all its fried, pork-infused, and sugary glory--is but one aspect of African American culinary heritage. Miller discusses how soul food has become incorporated into American culture and explores its connections to identity politics, bad health raps, and healthier alternatives. This refreshing look at one of America's most celebrated, mythologized, and maligned cuisines is enriched by spirited sidebars, photographs, and twenty-two recipes.

The Myth of Luck

Author: Steven D. Hales
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350149314
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 241

Book Description
Humanity has thrown everything we have at implacable luck-novel theologies, entire philosophical movements, fresh branches of mathematics-and yet we seem to have gained only the smallest edge on the power of fortune. The Myth of Luck tells us why we have been fighting an unconquerable foe. Taking us on a guided tour of one of our oldest concepts, we begin in ancient Greece and Rome, considering how Plato, Plutarch, and the Stoics understood luck, before entering the theoretical world of probability and exploring how luck relates to theology, sports, ethics, gambling, knowledge, and present-day psychology. As we travel across traditions, times and cultures, we come to realize that it's not that as soon as we solve one philosophical problem with luck that two more appear, like heads on a hydra, but rather that the monster is altogether mythological. We cannot master luck because there is nothing to defeat: luck is no more than a persistent and troubling illusion. By introducing us to compelling arguments and convincing reasons that explain why there is no such thing as luck, we finally see why in a very real sense we make our own luck, that luck is our own doing. The Myth of Luck helps us to regain our own agency in the world - telling the entertaining story of the philosophy and history of luck along the way.

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Author: omblivnju1027
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
ISBN: 1453534288
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Book Description
Veronica A. Odum, a.k.a. omblivnju1027, is a child of Yahweh (God). She is the daughter to a mother who was a domestic engineer and a nurses aide. Her father was a steel worker. Veronica was born and still resides in Baltimore, Maryland. She is of the Methodist faith, a Methodist lay speaker, and the founder of the KISS (Keep it Spiritually Simple) Ministry based on the scripture Luke 10:2728. A graduate of Morgan State University, Veronica has been a teacher of mathematics for over twentytwo years. As a former senior sales director with Mary Kay Cosmetics, the motto, Ordering your life by placing God fi rst, family second, and career third is the belief this author stands by. She enjoys singing, songwriting, poetry, and abstract painting. Veronicas passions include games of strategy, ten-pin bowling, dancing (especially line dancing), a day on the beach, a good book, and a good movie (no horror). The International Library of Poetrys (ILP) Editors selected omblivnju1027 to participate in the Best Poems and Poets of 2007 Award. In 2008, Veronica became a distinguished member of the International Society of Poets (ISP). She is a recipient of three 2008 Editors Choice Awards. Also Veronica is the recipient of the 2008 Outstanding Achievement in Poetry Crystal Award Trophy and the 2008 Poets Merit Award (ISP). She has been married thirty-four years to a man of God, Vance, and through this union, a blessing in son, Verdine.