New: Book Report: Against the Gods (the Remarkable Story of Risk)

Last night, I went out to a musical performance dealie. It was TV on the Radio. I'd heard their most recent album, and it seemed OK but not great. But Rob Pfile wanted to go see the show. Rob has pretty good taste, so I went to see the show too. Wow, they're good live. I'm glad I went despite my earlier misgivings. Sometimes risk is rewarded. Oh, right, that was my point. I read a book about the history of risk.

Specifically, it's a book about the history of math, probability, statistics, actuarial science, and thinking about risk. The math part--the early history when the whole idea of probability hadn't really emerged--wasn't much fun because it was a bunch of material that I halfway knew already. But the later chapters contained more things that I didn't know. If the idea of a history of statistics doesn't appeal to you, you probably won't like this book. I liked it. I'm not sure how much of it I retained, though.

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Posted 2007-03-29