How to Expect the Unexpected

A Waterstones Best Popular Science Book of 2023

'Delightfully clear and vivid to read...A splendid book! Philip Pullman

'Absolutely fascinating' James O'Brien

'An exceptional book - readable, funny and more needed than ever' Dr Chris van Tulleken, bestselling author of Ultra-Processed People

Are you more likely to become a professional footballer if your surname is Ball? How can you be one hundred per cent sure you will win a bet? Why did so many Pompeiians stay put while Mount Vesuvius was erupting? How do you prevent a nuclear war?

Ever since the dawn of human civilisation, we have been trying to make predictions about what's in store for us. We do this on a personal level, so that we can get on with our lives efficiently (should I hang my laundry out to dry, or will it rain?). But we also have to predict on a much larger scale, often for the good of our broader society (how can we spot economic downturns or prevent terrorist attacks?). For just as long, we have been getting it wrong. From religious oracles to weather forecasters, and from politicians to economists, we are subjected to poor predictions all the time. Our job is to separate the good from the bad. Unfortunately, the foibles of our own biology - the biases that ultimately make us human - can let us down when it comes to making rational inferences about the world around us. And that can have disastrous consequences.

How to Expect the Unexpected will teach you how and why predictions go wrong, help you to spot phony forecasts and give you a better chance of getting your own predictions correct.

A vivid, wide-ranging and delightful guide to the light and the dark side of prediction Tim Harford, bestselling author of How to Make the World Add Up Kit Yates presents maths as it should be taught to everyone: accessible, fun, stimulating, and deeply relevant to our lives. Spend some time with this book and you're likely to make better judgements and decisions, to see through the charlatans and snake-oil salespeople - and perhaps even to fool yourself a little less. Philip Ball, author of the award-winning Critical Mass Fascinating and fun. From the everyday to global challenges, Kit Yates explores how changing your mind - so often thought to be a weakness - is the best life skill we can all acquire. A brilliant book Professor Alice Roberts Yates' writing is a beacon of clarity sorely needed in a complicated and confusing world. How do we overcome our biases, understand coincidences or tackle the unreliability of our intuition? With bountiful familiar examples, he effortlessly overturns so many of our deep-rooted wrong-headed notions gently and persuasively. I'll be quoting from this book Jim Al-Khalili I'm a Yates fan. His style is all-clarity-no-bullshit Aperiodical Seriously good Caroline Lucas MP Absolutely fascinating James O'Brien An exceptional book - readable, funny and more needed than ever Dr Chris van Tulleken, bestselling author of Ultra-Processed People Yates' writing style imbues the subjects covered with an infectious enthusiasm, artfully dispelling the dry, stuffy perceptions many people have of maths Physics World HOW TO EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED is fascinating and (very much to the point) delightfully clear and vivid to read. Like many people, I like reading about maths without actually knowing how to do it, and part of the pleasure of reading this came from its many examples from everyday life. A splendid book! Philip Pullman

Kit Yates is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Mathematical Sciences and co-director of the Centre for Mathematical Biology at the University of Bath. He completed his PhD in mathematics at the University of Oxford in 2011.

His research demonstrates that mathematics can be used to describe all sorts of real-world phenomena: from embryo formation to locust swarming and from sleeping sickness to egg-shell patterning. He is particularly interested in the role that randomness plays in biology. His research into mathematical biology has been covered by the BBC, the Guardian, the Telegraph, the Daily Mail, RTE, Scientific American and Reuters amongst others. Alongside his academic position, Kit is also an author and science communicator. The Maths of Life and Death is his first book.

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