Welcome to the wondrous world of statistics and probability! This informal book will pick you up at the very beginning and gently guide you through the core concepts of probabilistic mathematics. It carefully explains the basic ideas and shows you how to apply them to a vast number of diverse situations. If you're looking for a dry textbook, you are in the wrong place. This book is all about understanding and applying and applying and applying ...

After closely examining the multiplication rule and its applications, including the dreaded at-least-problems, it goes on to show how the binomial distribution works, what astonishing things you can do with the expected value, what's so great about the Poisson distribution, how to solve statistical problems using geometry and what all the fuss with Bayes' theorem is about. As a plus, the final chapter provides a quick peek into further statistical concepts such as Markov chains, standard deviation and standard error, Chi-Square and cellular automatons.

Besides demonstrating how the concepts work, the many bits of applications, the statistical snacks, cover a wide and diverse range of topics: monkeys on a typewriter, multiple choice tests, missile accuracy, collecting stickers, fair games, quantitative linguistics, space probe communication, soccer, tired colleagues, drunk drivers, immigrants and crime, pirates and global warming and many more.

From the author of "Physics! In Quantities and Examples" and the series "Great Formulas Explained".

Get to know mathematics from a new perspective!