Book Mention - Ten Great Ideas About Chance

First of all, I should say that I neither advertise nor do I have any affiliate programs like some bloggers do with Amazon. This is just me.

I am currently about half way through an interesting new book (Ten Great Ideas About Chance, Princeton University Press. November 7, 2017; amazon link here...I am now starting chapter 7 - Bruno de Finetti). The book is described like this:

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, gamblers and mathematicians transformed the idea of chance from a mystery into the discipline of probability, setting the stage for a series of breakthroughs that enabled or transformed innumerable fields, from gambling, mathematics, statistics, economics, and finance to physics and computer science. This book tells the story of ten great ideas about chance and the thinkers who developed them, tracing the philosophical implications of these ideas as well as their mathematical impact.

The authors are Perci Diaconis and Brian Skyrms, respectively: 1) the Mary V. Sunseri Professor of Statistics and Mathematics at Stanford U. and 2) the Distinguished Professor in the Department of Logic and Philosophy at the University of CA at Irvine, and professor of Philosophy at Stanford.

I say "book mention" and "interesting" above because I can't really review it because I am only half way through and an awful lot of it is over my head. That, and I'm not totally sure I feel great every time I read a page that I have to read again only to realize I don't understand it.   On the other hand this is, in fact, the "intro course" I was looking for. It gives the history. It provides the context. It names names. And it does not shy away from the math and structural concepts.  So, while it is interesting in the sense that interesting is hard like eating kale and pretending to like it, it is also something I am glad I am reading, glad like someone just brought me cheesecake that I didn't order and don't want but will no doubt eat anyway.