How to Expect the Unexpected

A fascinating exploration of how we can make better, accessible, mathematically-informed predictions about the world around us.

A vivid, wide-ranging and delightful guide to the light and the dark side of prediction

Kit Yates presents maths as it should be taught to everyone: accessible, fun, stimulating, and deeply relevant to our lives. Spend some time with this book and you're likely to make better judgements and decisions, to see through the charlatans and snake-oil salespeople - and perhaps even to fool yourself a little less.

Fascinating and fun. From the everyday to global challenges, Kit Yates explores how changing your mind - so often thought to be a weakness - is the best life skill we can all acquire. A brilliant book

Yates' writing is a beacon of clarity sorely needed in a complicated and confusing world. How do we overcome our biases, understand coincidences or tackle the unreliability of our intuition? With bountiful familiar examples, he effortlessly overturns so many of our deep-rooted wrong-headed notions gently and persuasively. I'll be quoting from this book

I'm a Yates fan. His style is all-clarity-no-bullshit

Seriously good

Absolutely fascinating

An exceptional book - readable, funny and more needed than ever

Yates' writing style imbues the subjects covered with an infectious enthusiasm, artfully dispelling the dry, stuffy perceptions many people have of maths

HOW TO EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED is fascinating and (very much to the point) delightfully clear and vivid to read. Like many people, I like reading about maths without actually knowing how to do it, and part of the pleasure of reading this came from its many examples from everyday life. A splendid book!

Kit Yates is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Mathematical Sciences and co-director of the Centre for Mathematical Biology at the University of Bath. He completed his PhD in mathematics at the University of Oxford in 2011. He is the author of The Maths of Life and Death , which was a Sunday Times Science Book of the Year. This is his second book.