The Perfect Bet: How Science and Math Are Taking the Luck Out of Gambling
by
Adam Kucharski
Published 23 Feb 2016
Ulam believed the same could be said of scientific research. Some scientists ran into seemingly good fortune so often that it was impossible not to suspect that there was an element of talent involved. Chemist Louis Pasteur put forward a similar philosophy in the nineteenth century. “Chance favours the prepared mind” was how he put it. Luck is rarely embedded so deeply in a situation that it can’t be altered. It might not be possible to completely remove luck, but history has shown that it can often be replaced by skill to some extent. Moreover, games that we assume rely solely on skill do not.
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NorthJersey.com, February 24, 2014. http://blog.northjersey.com/meadowlandsmatters/7891/u-s-supreme-court-declines-to-take-dicristina-poker-case-reminder-of-challenge-faced-by-nj-sports-betting-advocates/. 202“There may be such a thing as habitual luck”: Ulam, S. M. Adventures of a Mathematician (Oakland: University of California Press, 1991). 202“Chance favours the prepared mind”: Quoted in: Weiss, R. A. “HIV and the Naked Ape.” In Serendipity: Fortune and the Prepared Mind, ed. M. De Rond and I. Morley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010). Originally said during a lecture at University of Lille, 1854. 203Matthew Salganik and colleagues at Columbia University: Salganik, M.
Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea, and Human Life
by
George Monbiot
Published 13 May 2013
One of the most intriguing features of this story is that hardly anyone who has set out to find a big cat in Britain has ever seen one. Almost without exception, the sightings have been unexpected; in most cases the cats appear to people who had never thought about them or did not believe in them. Pasteur’s maxim–that chance favours the prepared mind–seems in this case not to apply. Nor have the tireless efforts to catch or kill these animals yielded anything more convincing. As Harpur notes, ‘more effort and expense than ever went into Imperial tiger hunts has been expended in the hunt for anomalous big cats’, and it has produced nothing except a few hapless creatures which have escaped from zoos or circuses or private collections, and are in almost all cases caught within a few hours of their flight.
Big Bang
by
Simon Singh
Published 1 Jan 2004
It would be all too easy to label scientists who have exploited serendipity as merely lucky, but that would be unfair. All these serendipitous scientists and inventors were able to build upon their chance observations only once they had accumulated enough knowledge to put them into context. As Louis Pasteur, who himself benefited from serendipity, put it: ‘Chance favours the prepared mind.’ Walpole also highlighted this in his original letter when he described serendipity as the result of ‘accidents and sagacity’. Furthermore, those who want to be touched by serendipity must be ready to embrace an opportunity when it presents itself, rather than merely brushing down their seed-covered trousers, pouring their failed superglue down the sink or abandoning a failed medical trial.