YOU WON'T REGRET READING THIS BOOK

We now come to much awaited book by Lev Tarasov The World Is Built On
Probability.

And this post also is the 200th post on Mirtitles!
Thanks to all who helped and encouraged!!

From the Back Cover:

This text is divided into two major parts.  The aim of the first part
is to convince the reader that the random world begins directly in his
or her own living room because, in fact, all modern life is based on
probability. The first part is on the concept of probability and
considers making decisions in conflict situations, optimizing queues,
games, and the control of various processes, and doing random
searches.

The second part of this text shows how fundamental chance is in nature using the probabilistic laws of modern physics and biology as
examples. Elements of quantum mechanics are also involved, and this
allows the author to demonstrate how probabilistic laws are basic to
microscopic phenomena. The idea is that the reader, passing from the
first part of the book to the second one, would see that probability
is not only around us but is at the basis of everything.

The Russian edition ran into 230,000 copies and is sold out.

YOU WON’T REGRET READING THIS BOOK

The book was translated from the Russian by Michael Burov and was
first published by Mir Publishers in 1988.

Thanks to Karen for getting this book from Amazon of Amerika (and I had to pay heftily in U$D, but that’s okay, I think, for a book like this). It is pretty ironic that we have now to get Soviet books from Amerika by paying in U$D.

Occasionally, some of your visitors may see an advertisement here.

Now, you will be seeing ads in the posts, by WordPress, which I do not like personally. For this particular reason, we may shift to a different server. They are asking for 30 U$D per year to keep it ad-free. With some more money, I think it is better to migrate to our own.

PDF | OCR | Pagination | Bookmarked | Cover | 600 dpi | 200 Pages |
22.8 MB

Note the files on Internet Archive may have different parameters.

Get the book here or here.

Contents

Introduction 9

Part One Tamed Chance 17

Chapter 1
Mathematics of Randomness 18

Probability 18
Random Numbers 26
Random Events 30
Discrete Random Variables 34
Continuous Random Variables 42

Chapter 2
Decision Making 46

These Difficult Decisions 46
Random Processes with Discrete States 50
Queueing Systems 55
Method of Statistical Testing 63
Games and Decision Making 69

Chapter 3
Control and Self-Control 79

The Problem of Control 79
From the “Black Box” to Cybernetics 81
Information 84
Selection of Information from Noise 94
On the Way to a Stochastic Model of the Brain 99

Part Two
Fundamentality of the Probability Laws 105

Chapter 4
Probability in Classical Physics 106
Thermodynamics and Its Puzzles 106
Molecules in a Gas and Probability 115
Pressure and Temperature of an Ideal Gas 124
Fluctuations 127
Entropy and Probability 132
Entropy and Information 138

Chapter 5
Probability in the Microcosm 142
Spontaneous Microprocesses 142
From Uncertainty Relations to the Wave Function 149
Interference and Summing Probability Amplitudes 154
Probability and Causality 160

Chapter 6
Probability in Biology 164
Introduction 164
The Patterns After the Random Combination of Genes in Crossbreeding 169
Mutations 176
Evolution Through the Eyes of geneticists 179

A concluding conversation 184
Recommended Literature 189