The hazards of feeling lucky in gambling Why do so many gamblers risk it all when they know the odds of winning are against them? Why do they believe dice are "hot" in a winning streak? Why do we expect heads on a coin toss after several flips have turned up tails? What's Luck Got to Do with It? takes a lively and eye-opening look at the mathematics, history, and psychology of gambling to reveal the most widely held misconceptions about luck. It exposes the hazards of feeling lucky, and uses the mathematics of predictable outcomes to show when our chances of winning are actually good. Mathematician Joseph Mazur traces the history of gambling from the earliest known archaeological evidence of dice playing among Neolithic peoples to the first systematic mathematical studies of games of chance during the Renaissance, from government-administered lotteries to the glittering seductions of grand casinos, and on to the global economic crisis brought on by financiers' trillion-dollar bets. Using plenty of engaging anecdotes, Mazur explains the mathematics behind gambling—including the laws of probability, statistics, betting against expectations, and the law of large numbers—and describes the psychological and emotional factors that entice people to put their faith in winning that ever-elusive jackpot despite its mathematical improbability. As entertaining as it is informative, What's Luck Got to Do with It? demonstrates the pervasive nature of our belief in luck and the deceptive psychology of winning and losing. Some images inside the book are unavailable due to digital copyright restrictions.

The American dream of equal opportunity is in peril. America's economic inequality is shocking, poverty threatens to become a heritable condition, and our healthcare system is crumbling despite ever increasing costs. In this thought-provoking book, Edward D. Kleinbard demonstrates how the failure to acknowledge the force of brute luck in our material lives exacerbates these crises leading to warped policy choices that impede genuine equality of opportunity for many Americans. What's Luck Got to Do with It? combines insights from economics, philosophy, and social psychology to argue for government's proper role in addressing the inequity of brute luck. Kleinbard shows how well-designed public investment can blunt the worst effects of existential bad luck that private insurance cannot reach and mitigate inequality by sharing the costs across the entire risk pool, which is to say, all of us. The benefits, as Kleinbard shares in a wealth of data, are economic as well as social a more inclusive economy, higher national income, and greater life satisfaction for millions of Americans. Like it or not, our lives and opportunities are determined largely by luck. Kleinbard shows that while we can't undo every instance of misfortune, we can offer a path to not just a fairer America, but greater economic growth, more broadly shared.

When a mild mannered preacher returns from Las Vegas with a jackpot and a new wife, odds are there is much more to the story! Trevor's mission of mercy goes awry when he drops a quarter into a slot and wins more than he bargained for. Has he fallen from grace? What happened in those lost hours? How can any of this possibly be God's plan?

Some people just don’t know how lucky they are. Including Emma Lenford, who’s just lucky enough to vomit on international television, win a trip to Wisconsin’s worst-kept vacation hotspot, and even find out that she’s related to some very infamous faces. Despite her newfound “luck”, Emma struggles to find a way to gain control of her life. She’s fully convinced that she’s been somehow cursed, and she has to figure out how stop the tragedies that keep befalling her before they get a little too out of control. Although, once you’ve been trapped and tortured via the ultimate atomic wedgie in a goat barn decorated with severed human body parts, maybe things have already gotten too far out of your control. Emma Lenford is truly the unluckiest 17-year-old on the planet. She keeps her sense of humor, though, through this series of seriously ill-fated situations. Her life is basically a sit-com where one traumatic thing after another befalls her, and it's all out of her control. She's constantly kidnapped, held at gunpoint, and even arrested for things she honestly didn't even do. Follow her as every supposedly lucky adventure turns south in the fourth book of the series that makes us all wonder, “what’s luck got to do with Emma Lenford?”