JOSEPH MAZUR

Euclid in the Rainforest (one of two Finalists of the 2005 PEN/​Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction and chosen as one of Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles of the Year 2005) examines the three types of logic: the classical logic of the Ancient Greeks, the bewildering logic of infinity, and the everyday logic of plausible reasoning that guides all science today.

What's Luck Got to Do With It? The History, Mathematics, and Psychology behind the Illusion of Luck in Gambling 2010 (232 pages, Princeton University Press, ISBN 978-0-691-13890-9) Now available.
Centering on the general mathematics of gambling, primarily on probability and statistics through a simple tutorial on what probability and statistics are about, this book moves on to explain expected value, the law of large numbers, coincidences, distribution functions and the mathematics of decision making. And that will give a partial idea—the mathematical piece—of what luck in gambling really is. Internet gambling, along with the usual Internet risks, is now popular, along with reality TV shows such as Deal or No Deal, which counts on both the psychological makeup of the contestants as well as on how little those contestants know about the mathematics of decision-making. Greed and compulsivity are behind the essential entertainment factors of those shows. The psychology of the audiences and contestants is investigated along with the contestant’s mixed problems of greed and stardom craving. Some compound combination of greed, ignorance of expected value and moment-of-fame glory takes over. And this will supply the psychological answer to the question of what luck really is.
Ultimately, we begin to understand greed and luck in gambling as well as why people accept bets with negative expectation and finally answer the central question of the book from both mathematical and psychological positions—what makes us feel lucky in gambling?