Everything Is Predictable

A fascinating intellectual history that takes a comparatively little-known but important idea and shows how it affects huge areas of our lives

Life is shot through with uncertainty, but in this fascinating, witty and perspective-shifting book, Tom Chivers shows why this needn't condemn us to powerlessness and panic. I finished Everything Is Predictable not only better informed about a captivating branch of mathematics, but with an invigorating sense of greater purchase on the world

One thing that is perfectly predictable is that Tom Chivers writes terrific books. This one is no exception: it's witty, lively and best of all, extremely nerdy. I learned a lot and so will you

A remarkable book by a remarkable writer about a remarkable theorem. The statistical chance of it not changing how you see the world forever is zero

EVERYTHING IS PREDICTABLE is one of those books that makes you feel smarter with every page you read. It should be required reading for anyone engaged in evidence-based decision-making - and I guess that means all of us

From assessing the effectiveness of treatments, to the way consciousness works and the way we make decisions, Tom Chivers makes a compelling case that Bayes' theorem is the one formula that everyone should understand

From an eighteenth-century cleric to the workings of the brain, Chivers explores the impact of Bayes' theorem; the mathematical basis for learning under uncertainty. After neatly summarising the history of probability and statistics, he handles challenging and controversial Bayesian approach to scientific evidence, induction, decision-making, statistical modelling, prediction, and human perception and reasoning. All with his customary light touch, and full of quotes and vivid stories. A filling but very tasty book

Life is a poker game where we are all trying to make the best decisions we can based on the limited amount of information we have. This book is about an equation, devised in 1763, which describes - mathematically - how we do that

Entertaining . . . both enthralling and relatively easy to understand. I can't remember when I last enjoyed a popular maths book so much. It's a delight

Tom Chivers is a science writer and author. He was given Royal Statistical Society 'Statistical Excellence in Journalism' awards in 2018 and 2020, and was declared the Science Writer of the Year by the Association of British Science Writers in 2021. His two previous books are The Rationalist's Guide to the Galaxy and How to Read Numbers (with David Chivers).