Probability Tales

Book excerpt: This book explores four real-world topics through the lens of probability theory. It can be used to supplement a standard text in probability or statistics. Most elementary textbooks present the basic theory and then illustrate the ideas with some neatly packaged examples. Here the authors assume that the reader has seen, or is learning, the basic theory from another book and concentrate in some depth on the following topics: streaks, the stock market, lotteries, and fingerprints. This extended format allows the authors to present multiple approaches to problems and to pursue promising side discussions in ways that would not be possible in a book constrained to cover a fixed set of topics. To keep the main narrative accessible, the authors have placed the more technical mathematical details in appendices. The appendices can be understood by someone who has taken one or two semesters of calculus.