Randomness

Author : Deborah J. Bennett
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780674020771
Total Pages : 260 pages
Book Rating : 4.74/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Randomness written by Deborah J. Bennett and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-07-01 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the ancients' first readings of the innards of birds to your neighbor's last bout with the state lottery, humankind has put itself into the hands of chance. Today life itself may be at stake when probability comes into play--in the chance of a false negative in a medical test, in the reliability of DNA findings as legal evidence, or in the likelihood of passing on a deadly congenital disease--yet as few people as ever understand the odds. This book is aimed at the trouble with trying to learn about probability. A story of the misconceptions and difficulties civilization overcame in progressing toward probabilistic thinking, Randomness is also a skillful account of what makes the science of probability so daunting in our own day. To acquire a (correct) intuition of chance is not easy to begin with, and moving from an intuitive sense to a formal notion of probability presents further problems. Author Deborah Bennett traces the path this process takes in an individual trying to come to grips with concepts of uncertainty and fairness, and also charts the parallel path by which societies have developed ideas about chance. Why, from ancient to modern times, have people resorted to chance in making decisions? Is a decision made by random choice fair? What role has gambling played in our understanding of chance? Why do some individuals and societies refuse to accept randomness at all? If understanding randomness is so important to probabilistic thinking, why do the experts disagree about what it really is? And why are our intuitions about chance almost always dead wrong? Anyone who has puzzled over a probability conundrum is struck by the paradoxes and counterintuitive results that occur at a relatively simple level. Why this should be, and how it has been the case through the ages, for bumblers and brilliant mathematicians alike, is the entertaining and enlightening lesson of Randomness.

Author : Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 1588367673
Total Pages : 369 pages
Book Rating : 4.79/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Fooled by Randomness written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and published by Random House. This book was released on 2008-10-14 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fooled by Randomness is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand. The other books in the series are The Black Swan, Antifragile, Skin in the Game, and The Bed of Procrustes. Fooled by Randomness is the word-of-mouth sensation that will change the way you think about business and the world. Nassim Nicholas Taleb–veteran trader, renowned risk expert, polymathic scholar, erudite raconteur, and New York Times bestselling author of The Black Swan–has written a modern classic that turns on its head what we believe about luck and skill. This book is about luck–or more precisely, about how we perceive and deal with luck in life and business. Set against the backdrop of the most conspicuous forum in which luck is mistaken for skill–the world of trading–Fooled by Randomness provides captivating insight into one of the least understood factors in all our lives. Writing in an entertaining narrative style, the author tackles major intellectual issues related to the underestimation of the influence of happenstance on our lives. The book is populated with an array of characters, some of whom have grasped, in their own way, the significance of chance: the baseball legend Yogi Berra; the philosopher of knowledge Karl Popper; the ancient world’s wisest man, Solon; the modern financier George Soros; and the Greek voyager Odysseus. We also meet the fictional Nero, who seems to understand the role of randomness in his professional life but falls victim to his own superstitious foolishness. However, the most recognizable character of all remains unnamed–the lucky fool who happens to be in the right place at the right time–he embodies the “survival of the least fit.” Such individuals attract devoted followers who believe in their guru’s insights and methods. But no one can replicate what is obtained by chance. Are we capable of distinguishing the fortunate charlatan from the genuine visionary? Must we always try to uncover nonexistent messages in random events? It may be impossible to guard ourselves against the vagaries of the goddess Fortuna, but after reading Fooled by Randomness we can be a little better prepared. Named by Fortune One of the Smartest Books of All Time A Financial Times Best Business Book of the Year

Author : Gregory J. Chaitin
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN 13 : 1447103076
Total Pages : 164 pages
Book Rating : 4.73/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Exploring RANDOMNESS written by Gregory J. Chaitin and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This essential companion to Chaitin's successful books The Unknowable and The Limits of Mathematics, presents the technical core of his theory of program-size complexity. The two previous volumes are more concerned with applications to meta-mathematics. LISP is used to present the key algorithms and to enable computer users to interact with the authors proofs and discover for themselves how they work. The LISP code for this book is available at the author's Web site together with a Java applet LISP interpreter. "No one has looked deeper and farther into the abyss of randomness and its role in mathematics than Greg Chaitin. This book tells you everything hes seen. Don miss it." John Casti, Santa Fe Institute, Author of Goedel: A Life of Logic.'

Author : Rodney G. Downey
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN 13 : 0387684417
Total Pages : 883 pages
Book Rating : 4.13/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Algorithmic Randomness and Complexity written by Rodney G. Downey and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2010-10-29 with total page 883 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Computability and complexity theory are two central areas of research in theoretical computer science. This book provides a systematic, technical development of "algorithmic randomness" and complexity for scientists from diverse fields.

Author : John Tyler Bonner
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691157014
Total Pages : 148 pages
Book Rating : 4.16/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Randomness in Evolution written by John Tyler Bonner and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-24 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Tyler Bonner here challenges a central tenet of evolutionary biology.

Author : Johanna N. Y. Franklin
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1108808271
Total Pages : 371 pages
Book Rating : 4.79/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Algorithmic Randomness written by Johanna N. Y. Franklin and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-05-07 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The last two decades have seen a wave of exciting new developments in the theory of algorithmic randomness and its applications to other areas of mathematics. This volume surveys much of the recent work that has not been included in published volumes until now. It contains a range of articles on algorithmic randomness and its interactions with closely related topics such as computability theory and computational complexity, as well as wider applications in areas of mathematics including analysis, probability, and ergodic theory. In addition to being an indispensable reference for researchers in algorithmic randomness, the unified view of the theory presented here makes this an excellent entry point for graduate students and other newcomers to the field.

Author : Leonard Mlodinow
Publisher : Vintage
ISBN 13 : 0307377547
Total Pages : 226 pages
Book Rating : 4.48/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Drunkard's Walk written by Leonard Mlodinow and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2008-05-13 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the classroom to the courtroom and from financial markets to supermarkets, an intriguing and illuminating look at how randomness, chance, and probability affect our daily lives that will intrigue, awe, and inspire. “Mlodinow writes in a breezy style, interspersing probabilistic mind-benders with portraits of theorists.... The result is a readable crash course in randomness.” —The New York Times Book Review With the born storyteller's command of narrative and imaginative approach, Leonard Mlodinow vividly demonstrates how our lives are profoundly informed by chance and randomness and how everything from wine ratings and corporate success to school grades and political polls are less reliable than we believe. By showing us the true nature of chance and revealing the psychological illusions that cause us to misjudge the world around us, Mlodinow gives us the tools we need to make more informed decisions. From the classroom to the courtroom and from financial markets to supermarkets, Mlodinow's intriguing and illuminating look at how randomness, chance, and probability affect our daily lives will intrigue, awe, and inspire.

Author : Karl Svozil
Publisher : World Scientific
ISBN 13 : 9789810208097
Total Pages : 314 pages
Book Rating : 4.9X/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Randomness & Undecidability in Physics written by Karl Svozil and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 1993 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent findings in the computer sciences, discrete mathematics, formal logics and metamathematics have opened up a royal road for the investigation of undecidability and randomness in physics. A translation of these formal concepts yields a fresh look into diverse features of physical modelling such as quantum complementarity and the measurement problem, but also stipulates questions related to the necessity of the assumption of continua.Conversely, any computer may be perceived as a physical system: not only in the immediate sense of the physical properties of its hardware. Computers are a medium to virtual realities. The foreseeable importance of such virtual realities stimulates the investigation of an ?inner description?, a ?virtual physics? of these universes of computation. Indeed, one may consider our own universe as just one particular realisation of an enormous number of virtual realities, most of them awaiting discovery.One motive of this book is the recognition that what is often referred to as ?randomness? in physics might actually be a signature of undecidability for systems whose evolution is computable on a step-by-step basis. To give a flavour of the type of questions envisaged: Consider an arbitrary algorithmic system which is computable on a step-by-step basis. Then it is in general impossible to specify a second algorithmic procedure, including itself, which, by experimental input-output analysis, is capable of finding the deterministic law of the first system. But even if such a law is specified beforehand, it is in general impossible to predict the system behaviour in the ?distant future?. In other words: no ?speedup? or ?computational shortcut? is available. In this approach, classical paradoxes can be formally translated into no-go theorems concerning intrinsic physical perception.It is suggested that complementarity can be modelled by experiments on finite automata, where measurements of one observable of the automaton destroys the possibility to measure another observable of the same automaton and it vice versa.Besides undecidability, a great part of the book is dedicated to a formal definition of randomness and entropy measures based on algorithmic information theory.

Author : Christian Bucher
Publisher : CRC Press
ISBN 13 : 0203876539
Total Pages : 248 pages
Book Rating : 4.34/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Computational Analysis of Randomness in Structural Mechanics written by Christian Bucher and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2009-03-30 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Proper treatment of structural behavior under severe loading - such as the performance of a high-rise building during an earthquake - relies heavily on the use of probability-based analysis and decision-making tools. Proper application of these tools is significantly enhanced by a thorough understanding of the underlying theoretical and computation

Author : A. Shen
Publisher : American Mathematical Society
ISBN 13 : 1470470640
Total Pages : 511 pages
Book Rating : 4.47/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Kolmogorov Complexity and Algorithmic Randomness written by A. Shen and published by American Mathematical Society. This book was released on 2022-05-18 with total page 511 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looking at a sequence of zeros and ones, we often feel that it is not random, that is, it is not plausible as an outcome of fair coin tossing. Why? The answer is provided by algorithmic information theory: because the sequence is compressible, that is, it has small complexity or, equivalently, can be produced by a short program. This idea, going back to Solomonoff, Kolmogorov, Chaitin, Levin, and others, is now the starting point of algorithmic information theory. The first part of this book is a textbook-style exposition of the basic notions of complexity and randomness; the second part covers some recent work done by participants of the “Kolmogorov seminar” in Moscow (started by Kolmogorov himself in the 1980s) and their colleagues. This book contains numerous exercises (embedded in the text) that will help readers to grasp the material.