ENGLISH

Knock on Wood: Luck, Chance, and the Meaning of Everything

By Jeffrey S Rosenthal

Book information

Publisher
HarperCollins Publishers
Year
2018
ISBN
1443453072, 9781443453073
Language
english
Format
EPUB
Filesize
833 kB (852498 bytes)
Edition
Hardcover
Pages
352\0
Time added
2018-10-03 15:05:39

Description

For readers of Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Daniel Levitin with a twist of Bill Bryson—a lighthearted, entertaining and fateful exploration of luck in everyday life For centuries, people around the world have prayed for good luck and warded against bad. Every language features a good luck greeting. Sailors have long looked for an albatross on the horizon as a symbol of good fortune. Jade, clovers, rabbits’ feet, wishbones: these items have lined the pockets of those seeking good fortune. For some, it’s bad luck to walk under a ladder, to enter and leave a home through different doors or to say “Macbeth” in a theatre. But is there such a thing as luck, or does luck often just explain common sense? Don’t walk under a ladder because, well, that’s just dangerous. You won the lottery not because of any supernatural force but because a random number generator selected the same numbers that you picked out at the corner store. You run into a neighbour from your street on the other side of the world: Random chance or pure fate? (Or does it depend on how much you like your neighbour?) Jeffrey S. Rosenthal, author of the bestsellerStruck by Lightning: The Curious World of Probabilities, was born on a Friday the thirteenth, a fact that he discovered long after he had become one of the world’s pre-eminent statisticians. Had he been living ignorantly and innocently under an unlucky cloud for all those years? Or is thirteen just another number? As a scientist and a man of reason, Rosenthal has long considered the value of luck, good and bad, seeking to measure chance and hope in formulas scratched out on chalkboards. InKnock on Wood, Rosenthal, with great humour and irreverence, divines the world of luck, fate and chance, putting his considerable scientific acumen to the test in deducing whether luck is real or the mere stuff of superstition.

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