Calculus of the Impossible: Review of The Improbability Principle (2014) by David Hand and The Logic of Miracles (2018) by Lásló Mérő
David J. Hand. 2014. The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day (New York, NY: Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux) 288 pp. ISBN: 978-0374175344. Lásló Mérő. 2018. The Logic of Miracles: Making Sense of Rare, Really Rare, and Impossibly Rar...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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National Numeracy Network
2018-07-01
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| Series: | Numeracy |
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| Online Access: | http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/numeracy/vol11/iss2/art14/ |
| Summary: | David J. Hand. 2014. The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day (New York, NY: Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux) 288 pp. ISBN: 978-0374175344.
Lásló Mérő. 2018. The Logic of Miracles: Making Sense of Rare, Really Rare, and Impossibly Rare Events (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press) 288 pp. ISBN: 978-0300224153.
David Hand and Lásló Mérő both grapple with the occurrence of seemingly impossible events in these two popular science books. In this comparative review, I describe the two books, and explain why I prefer Hand's treatment of the impossible. |
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| ISSN: | 1936-4660 1936-4660 |