Do Dice Play God? The Mathematics of Uncertainty | 誠品線上

骰子能扮演上帝嗎? 18個不確定性的數學思考

內容簡介

內容簡介 愛因斯坦曾說「上帝不會和宇宙擲骰子」，認為自然法則不包含隨機性。 但骰子有個不可告人的祕密：它們並沒我們想的那麼隨機。 最會說故事的數學家 英國皇家學會成員、暢銷書《改變世界的17個方程式》作者伊恩・史都華 將永遠打消你想當個賭徒的念頭！ 不確定性隨處可見。任何對未來的猜想都藏有不確定性：天氣、經濟、未出生的胎兒性別，甚至人口、行星運行這些看似能確定的量，都有誤差的可能。 人類一直想定義、理解並限制不確定性。一開始，巫師用肝臟、茶葉和星星占卜。而後，數學家和科學家努力試圖馴服機率和統計學。時至今日，大數據與AI，又成為人類與不確定性搏鬥的最新武器。 在本書中，當代最負盛名的數學教授伊恩．史都華，將以一貫的幽默風趣、深入淺出方式，帶你探索最迷人的不確定性歷史。包括賭博、機率、統計、金融；天氣預測、普查、醫學研究、混沌、量子物理學，以及更多主題的有趣討論。他很清楚地點出一件事：數學告訴你的合理機率就是唯一的確定性。 本中文書介出自＜＜骰子能扮演上帝嗎? 18個不確定性的數學思考＞＞ 商周出版 Uncertainty is everywhere. It lurks in every consideration of the future - the weather, the economy, the sex of an unborn child - even quantities we think that we know such as populations or the transit of the planets contain the possibility of error. It's no wonder that, throughout that history, we have attempted to produce rigidly defined areas of uncertainty - we prefer the surprise party to the surprise asteroid. We began our quest to make certain an uncertain world by reading omens in livers, tea leaves, and the stars. However, over the centuries, driven by curiosity, competition, and a desire be better gamblers, pioneering mathematicians and scientists began to reduce wild uncertainties to tame distributions of probability and statistical inferences. But, even as unknown unknowns became known unknowns, our pessimism made us believe that some problems were unsolvable and our intuition misled us. Worse, as we realized how omnipresent and varied uncertainty is, we encountered chaos, quantum mechanics, and the limitations of our predictive power. Bestselling author Professor Ian Stewart explores the history and mathematics of uncertainty. Touching on gambling, probability, statistics, financial and weather forecasts, censuses, medical studies, chaos, quantum physics, and climate, he makes one thing clear: a reasonable probability is the only certainty.

作者介紹

作者介紹 Ian Stewart Ian Stewart is Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at the University of Warwick and the author of the bestseller Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematics Curiosities. His recent books include Significant Figures, Incredible Numbers, Seventeen Equations that Changed the World, Professor Stewart's Casebook of Mathematical Mysteries and Calculating the Cosmos (all published by Profile). His app, Incredible Numbers, was published jointly by Profile and Touch Press in 2014. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society.

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