dance with chance

Many things which happen in our lives are down to chance, but according to Spyros Makridakis ,Robin Hogarth and Anil Gaba we'd rather believe that they such things are under our control. In Dance with Chance: Making Luck Work for You they put forward their arguments and look at what we can do about it.

The authors start off by looking at medicine, and the medical 'advice' we are bombarded with every day. They go to the subject of investment, arguing that the difference between the best and worst performers is often a matter of chance. They show how the companies highlighted as excellent by business gurus often go on to mediocre performance. The book then gets on to how best to make decisions , with a final chapter looking at the search for happiness.

The book is very useful in warning against blindly following the current fashion or the advice of 'experts'. However, I had my doubts. The authors look at how different factors affect how long we live, and highlight the large differences between different studies. To me this would suggest finding out more about the studies, rather than putting the difference down to chance. Also the authors advice of using simple models to make decisions seems to me to be liable to be upset by the 'black swans' they warned us about earlier. Finally, if you're going to do something, it's best to believe in what you're doing, rather than worrying about anything that might go worng. So it's an entertaining book to read, but I'm not going to take the advice too seriously.