Fluke

Fluke is by Joseph Mazur and it's boring. It starts off with an introduction musing about coincidences. Then, it tells ten disjointed stories about coincidences, which can't really have any impact because they are so short and unrelated, so that's boring. Then, he talks about math, and how everything happens eventually, the world is big, yadda yadda yadda. He hints at some cool concepts, and doesn't really go much in depth into them, and it's boring.

Then, he uses this mathematics of probability to give probabilities for the ten stories you read in the beginning. By this time, you've mostly forgotten the stories, but it doesn't matter because he just picks random numbers for the probabilities. And sometimes, he doesn't even do the math right! Like, analyzing the fourth story, he says a probability would be, "1/30 x 1/30 ≈ 0.001, or odds of 998 to 1." Yes, 1/30 x 1/30 = 1/900, which is about 0.001, but that makes the odds 899 to 1. HE FAILS TO FOLLOW THE RULES HE LITERALLY TELLS YOU ABOUT. So, in summary, that section is trash. Then, he has a few essays on probability, risk, and chance which are interesting. That is the only decent part of the book.

In conclusion, read Fluke only if you are very bored.