Our lives are immersed in a sea of chance. Everyone’s existence is a meeting point of a multitude of accidents. The origin of the word ‘chance’ is usually traced back to the vulgar Latin word ‘cadentia’, meaning a befalling by fortuitous circumstances, with no knowable or determinable causes. The Roman philosopher Cicero clearly expressed the idea of ‘chance’ in his work De Divinatione: For we do not apply the words ‘chance’, ‘luck’, ‘accident’ or ‘casualty’ except toanevent which hassooccurredorhappened that it either might not have occurred at all, or might have occurred in any other way. 2.VI.15. For if a thing that is going to happen, may happen in one way or another, indi?erently, chance is predominant; but things that happen by chance cannot be certain. 2.IX.24. Ina certain sensechance isthespiceoflife. Iftherewerenophenomena with unforeseeable outcomes, phenomena with an element of chance, all temporal cause–e?ect sequences would be completely deterministic.
Table of Content
Probabilities and Games of Chance.- Amazing Conditions.- Expecting to Win.- The Wonderful Curve.- Probable Inferences.- Fortune and Ruin.- The Nature of Chance.- Noisy Irregularities.- Chance and Order.- Living with Chance.
About the author
J.P. Marques de Sá is Full Professor at the Engineering Faculty of the University of Porto. He is chairman of the Signal Processing Group of the Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Porto. His research interests are in the areas of Physiological Signal Analysis, Pattern Recognition and Neural Networks. He is a reviewer for several scientific journals and chairman of the ‘Summer School on Neural Networks’ annually held at Porto. He is author of six books, four in Portuguese and two in English.
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