Screen LibraryThe logic of miracles : making sense of rare, really rare, and impossibly rare events /
We live in a much more turbulent world than we like to think, but the science we use to analyze economic, financial, and statistical events mostly disregards the world's essentially chaotic nature. We need to get used to the idea that wildly improbable events are actually part of the natural or...
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| Main Authors: | |
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| Group Author: | ; |
| Published: |
Yale University Press,
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| Publisher Address: | New Haven : |
| Publication Dates: | [2018] |
| Literature type: | Book |
| Language: |
English Hungarian |
| Subjects: | |
| Summary: |
We live in a much more turbulent world than we like to think, but the science we use to analyze economic, financial, and statistical events mostly disregards the world's essentially chaotic nature. We need to get used to the idea that wildly improbable events are actually part of the natural order. The renowned Hungarian mathematician and psychologist László Mérő explains how the wild and mild worlds (which he names Wildovia and Mildovia) coexist, and that different laws apply to each. Even if we live in an ultimately wild universe, he argues, we're better off pretending that it obeys Mildovian laws. Doing so may amount to a self-fulfilling prophecy and create an island of predictability in a very rough sea. Perched on the ragged border between economics and complexity theory, Mérő proposes to extend the reach of science to subjects previously considered outside its grasp: the unpredictable, unrepeatable, highly improbable events we commonly call "miracles."--Provided by publisher. |
| Carrier Form: | xii, 275 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (pages 261-266) and index. |
| ISBN: |
9780300224153 (hardback : alkaline paper) : 030022415X (hardback : alkaline paper) |
| Index Number: | QA273 |
| CLC: | O211 |
| Call Number: | O211/M567 |
| Contents: | Part one. Secular miracles -- On the existence of miracles -- The mild world and the wild world -- The source of miracles: Gödel's idea -- Part two. The mild world -- The power of normal distribution -- The extremities of Mildovia -- The sources of equilibrium -- Part three. The wild world -- The mathematics of the unpredictable -- Scale-invariance -- The levels of wildness -- Life in Wildovia -- Part four. Preparing for the inconceivable -- Adapting to Wildovia -- Antifragility -- Convertible knowledge. |