Gambling Gods

The development of gambling techniques led to the beginning of modern statistics, and this absorbing history illustrates the science's rise with vignettes from the lives of Galileo, Fermat, Pascal, and others. Fascinating allusions to the classics, archaeology, biography, poetry, and fiction endow this volume with universal appeal. 1962 edition.

Risk management, which assumes that future risks can be understood, measured and to some extent predicted, is the focus of this solid, thoroughgoing history. Probability theory, pioneered by 17th-century French mathematicians Blaise Pascal and Pierre de Fermat, has made possible the design of great bridges, electric power utilities and insurance policies. The statistical sampling methods invented by dour Swiss scientist Jacob Bernoulli undergird diverse activities such as the testing of new drugs, stock-picking and wine tasting. Bernstein (Capital Ideas) animates his narrative with a colorful cast of risk-analyzers, including gambling addict Girolamo Cardano, 16th-century Italian physician to the Pope; and John Maynard Keynes, whose concerns over economic uncertainty compelled him to recommend an active, interventionist role for government. Bernstein also traces the development of business forecasting, game theory, insurance and derivatives, and surveys recent advances in risk forecasting made possible through chaos theory and by the development of neural networks

Le temps est-il une illusion, une réalité, un concept ? De l’accélérateur de particules du CERN de Genève à des coulées de lave à Hawaï, de la décadence de la ville de Detroit à des rites funéraires en Inde, il existe moult façons de tenter de capter l’invisible, de définir l’indicible. Peter Mettler invite à un voyage d’exploration hypnotisant, presque psychédélique, secondé par une bande sonore subtile. Dix ans après Gambling, gods & LSD, son fantastique essai visuel sur la transcendance, le réalisateur suisse reste un homme guidé par son intuition et sa capacité d’émerveillement comme le prouve ce film d'une profonde et rare beauté.