Most people have heard of, or have actually experienced, ‘strange coincidences’, of the ‘losing wedding ring on honeymoon in coastal village and then years later, when fishing, finding the ring in the belly of a trout’ variety. Sometimes, the story is helped along a little over the years, such as the 1911 demise of Green, Berry and Hill who’d murdered Sir Edmund Berry Godfrey on *Greenberry* Hill, as used in the opening sequence of the 1999 Magnolia movie featuring the late great Philip Seymour Hoffman. The murder, however actually took place in the 17th century, and on *Primrose* Hill, which was later renamed to Greenberry Hill.
Still, odd things do happen, leading many to wonder ‘wow and what’s the probability of that!’. Strange events can however occur without the need for ghostly Theremin music to suddenly play in the background, in that they’re actually merely examples of coincidence, helped along by human foibles.
Coincidences and foibles are entertainingly and educationally examined in Professor David Hand’s excellent new 2014 book ‘The Improbability Principle: why coincidences, miracles and rare events happen every day’.
http://improbability-principle.com/.
Prof Hand is an Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at Imperial College London, who like fellow British Statistician Brian ‘Chance Rules OK’ Everitt, has been writing instructive as well as readable texts and general books for nigh on forty years.
The book is not scarily mathematical at all, and illustrates using cards, dice, marbles in urns etc, although it might have been fun in the book, or at least the book’s website, to have some actual exercises that more active readers could have undertaken, using dice, cards or electronic versions thereof, such as the free Java version of Simon and Bruce’s classic Resampling Stats software, known as Stats 101 http://www.statistics101.net/ (commercial Excel version available at http://www.resample.com/excel/)
All in all though, The Improbability Principle is not only highly readable, entertaining and inexpensive, it is an absolute snorter of a book, for a wide audience, including Uncles, Aunties, Grandmama’s and Grandpapa’s, and is thoroughly recommended!
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