Fluke

`Delightfully written.' * <i>E&T Magazine</i> * '[An] entirely delightful slice of popular science...I'm no mathematician, and I was both fascinated and enchanted'. -- Alison Flood * <i>Bookseller</i> * `Mazur uses probability to strip chance events of some of their mystery.' * <i>Guardian</i> * `Always entertaining and frequently insightful, Fluke is never less than thought-provoking.' * Amir Alexander, <i>Wall Street Journal</i> * `With charm and clarity, Joe Mazur leads us through the strange terrain of chance and surprise... A terrific read, and a welcome antidote to superstition and gullibility.' -- Ian Stewart, author of <i>Professor Stewart's Incredible Numbers</i> `The chances are very slim that you'd ever read this blurb. A simple-minded calculation puts the odds at about 50,000 to one against. Yet... here you are. How weird is this seemingly far-fetched coincidence? Well, dear reader, you've picked up the right book to answer that question.' -- Charles Seife, author of <i>Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea</i> `Joe Mazur's Fluke walks the reader, hand in steady hand, through the weird and dangerous landscape of extreme probability, distinguishing cause from correlate, and phenomenon from mere coincidence.' -- Jordan Ellenberg, author of <i>How Not To Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking</i> `An exciting addition to the ranks of books exploring the mysteries of chance and coincidence in the vein of The Black Swan and The Improbability Principle.' -- David J. Hand, Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at Imperial College London and author of <i>The Improbability Principle</i>