Adam Kucharski

An Observer Book of the Year A Times Science Book of the Year A New Statesman Book of the Year A Financial Times Science Book of the Year 'It is hard to imagine a more timely book ... much of the modern world will make more sense having read it.' The Times A deadly virus suddenly explodes into the population. A political movement gathers pace, and then quickly vanishes. An idea takes off like wildfire, changing our world forever. We live in a world that's more interconnected than ever before. Our lives are shaped by outbreaks - of disease, of misinformation, even of violence - that appear, spread and fade away with bewildering speed. To understand them, we need to learn the hidden laws that govern them. From 'superspreaders' who might spark a pandemic or bring down a financial system to the social dynamics that make loneliness catch on, The Rules of Contagion offers compelling insights into human behaviour and explains how we can get better at predicting what happens next. Along the way, Adam Kucharski explores how innovations spread through friendship networks, what links computer viruses with folk stories - and why the most useful predictions aren't necessarily the ones that come true.

Why Things Spread - and Why They Stop

The Rules of Contagion

There is one thing about gambling that everyone knows: the house always wins. Lotteries are set up to guarantee profits, to the state. A craps game is a sure thing, but only if you own the table. Sometimes, however, everyone is wrong. After all, the reason that casinos ban card counters is that counting cards works. Indeed, for the past 500 years, gamblers--led by mathematicians and scientists--have been trying to figure out how to turn the tables on the house and pull the rug out from under Lady Luck. In The Perfect Bet, mathematician and award-winning writer Adam Kucharski tells the astonishing story of how the experts have done it, revolutionizing mathematics and science in the process. From Galileo to Alan Turing, betting has been scientists’ playground for ideas: dice games in sixteenth-century bars gave birth to the theory of probability, and poker to game theory (mathematician John von Neumann wanted to improve his game) and to much of artificial intelligence. Kucharski gives us a collection of rogues, geniuses, and mavericks who are equally at home in a casino in Monte Carlo as investigating how to build an atomic bomb for the Manhattan Project. They include the mathematician who flipped a coin 25,000 times to see if it was fair; the college kids who gamed the Massachusetts lottery to yield millions of dollars in profit; and the horse-betting syndicates of Hong Kong’s Happy Valley, who turned a wager on ponies into a multi-billion-dollar industry. With mathematical rigor and narrative flair, Adam Kucharski reveals the tangled history of betting and science. The house can seem unbeatable. In this book, Kucharski shows us just why it isn’t. Even better, he shows us how the search for the perfect bet has been crucial for the scientific pursuit of a better world

How Science and Math Are Taking the Luck Out of Gambling

The Perfect Bet

Why Things Spread--And Why They Stop

Prawa epidemii. Skąd się epidemie biorą i czemu wygasają?

Smittsamma utbrott kan anta många former; från innovationer till gängkriminalitet. Ibland vill vi att saker ska ta fart, ibland är det livsavgörande att de stannar upp. För varje virus som hoppar från djur till människa och blir en pandemi är det miljoner som inte infekterar någon alls. Under det senaste året har vi blivit bekanta med begrepp som de flesta av oss inte tänkt särskilt mycket på förut: reproduktionstal, superspridare och flockimmunitet är några av dem. De matematiska modeller som beskriver virusets spridning påverkar myndigheternas åtgärder och har stor effekt på våra liv. Matematikern och epidemiologen Adam Kucharski har lyckats med konststycket att skriva en bladvändare utifrån dessa modeller. Forskning kring sjukdomsutbrott löper som en röd tråd i boken, men idag används samma modeller också för att förstå och förutspå smittsamma fenomen inom helt andra fält. Författaren beskriver dessa dolda lagar, han kopplar samman saker som ter sig vitt skilda och förklarar dem på nya sätt: hur finanskriser beter sig som sexuellt överförbara sjukdomar och hur metoder som användes för att utrota smittkoppor nu tas i bruk för att minska våld med skjutvapen. Han visar på mönster och logik i det som ter sig nyckfullt, enormt och ogreppbart. Smitta berättar mycket om mänskligt beteende, den moderna världen och hur vi försöker förutspå framtiden.

Om virus, våld, finanskriser och fake news

Smitta

Gamblers have been trying to figure out how to game the system since our ancestors first made wagers over dice fashioned from knucklebones: in revolutionary Paris, the 'martingale' strategy was rumoured to lead to foolproof success at roulette ; today, professional gamblers are using cutting-edge techniques to tilt the odds in their favour. Science is giving us the competitive edge over opponents, casinos and bookmakers. But is there such a thing as a perfect bet?The Perfect Bet looks beyond probability and statistics to examine how wagers have inspired a plethora of new disciplines - spanning chaos theory, machine learning and game theory - which are not just revolutionising gambling, but changing our fundamental notions about chance, randomness and luck. Explaining why poker is gaming's last bastion of human superiority over AI, how methods originally developed for the US nuclear programme are helping pundits predict sports results and why a new breed of algorithms are losing banks millions, The Perfect Bet has the inside track on any wager you'd care to place.

How Science and Maths Are Taking the Luck Out of Gambling

For the past 500 years, gamblers-led by mathematicians and scientists-have been trying to figure out how to pull the rug out from under Lady Luck. In The Perfect Bet, mathematician and award-winning writer Adam Kucharski tells the astonishing story of how the experts have succeeded, revolutionizing mathematics and science in the process. The house can seem unbeatable. Kucharski shows us just why it isn't. Even better, he demonstrates how the search for the perfect bet has been crucial for the scientific pursuit of a better world.

Adam Kucharski

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