The Jungles of Randomness: A Mathematical Safari

In this work of popular mathematics, Ivars Peterson explains the phenomena and regularity underlying seemingly random occurrences in our lives. Dry wit and keen understanding of mundane episodes provide an impressing dissection of how even the most chance events are in fact due to phenomena that, though easily understood, interact in such complex ways as to be beyond our comprehension--producing the supposedly "random" results we perceive.As with many attempts to popularize science, this book is very light on theory and equations, instead explaining the practical significance of its subject. However, it does provide many names and enough theory to serve as a jumping point for further investigation into such areas as chaos, fractal geometry, information theory, and more.

....not evvybody shares my love of mathematics, statistics, games and chance. People say folks like me are a strange lot, hence, I have been relunctant to put many mathematical and game related book reviews in my repertoire. This, however, is an exception to the rule..."math book = dry reading". It shows how probability and stats and random number generating can apply to evvyday living.Before I go on, I have the urge to type these:"Ah, but to all the other monkeys in the world, maybe the ape sitting at the keyboard DID recreate the Gutenberg Bible.""When travelling in Europe, be wary of non-bottled potable water and, apparently, buy one get three free cheeseburgers."There, I've gotten those off my chest. What do they have to do with this review? Well, Peterson here deals with odds--Odds and their contexts, like in coin flips and dice outcomes and hot hands for pro basketball players and random number generators on slot machines and such. The Chapters on Brownian Motion entitled "Trails of the Wanderer" and "Lifetimes of Chance" are great because he talks about the lottery and winning the lottery, how stocks in the stock market have some type of Brownian motion, magnets, dominoes, roulette wheels at casinos--you know all the interesting things a man ought to be attracted to, described in a punchy, easy to digest manner... Each chapter is forwarded with a quote or poetry verse gleaned from classic literature, for example, the Chapter "Complete Chaos" has a part of a canto from Milton's "Paradise Lost".Also the Color Plates show some awesome sights like the one depicting vibrations on the membrane shaped like a fractal snowflake and the visual representation of the output from a high speed random-number generator.A few lay types may be put off by his mentioning of some musty mathematician or statistician here and there but, to his credit Peterson does not try to lay some indecipherable equation on the reader when he describes what said math or stat person is to his basic text. Or, in other words, no need for math anxiety unless you're generally anxious about a lot anyways...this ain't rocket science, people!Well, actually, yes it could be, but you would not know it from the way Peterson has presented it in this fabulous read....

I can't believe I'm the first to reviw this book! I have found the information and references in this book to be very good. In most cases Ivars Peterson is one of the best new science and mathematics writers that I know of! I'm interested in chaos and fractals, but mathematics also is in this book. There seems to be a little of everything. There is even work by Mandelbrot that I hadn't read about. I can only fault that he didn't put in enough of the equations and code to produce the examples. Also a glossary of terms would be helpful. But it is a very good buy in paperback!