Some probability problems are so difficult that they stump the smartest
mathematicians. But even the hardest of these problems can often be solved
with a computer and a Monte Carlo simulation, in which a random-number generator
simulates a physical process, such as a million rolls of a pair of dice. This is
what Digital Dice is all about: how to get numerical answers to difficult
probability problems without having to solve complicated mathematical equations.

Popular-math writer Paul Nahin challenges readers to solve twenty-one difficult
but fun problems, from determining the odds of coin-flipping games to figuring
out the behavior of elevators. Problems build from relatively easy (deciding
whether a dishwasher who breaks most of the dishes at a restaurant during
a given week is clumsy or just the victim of randomness) to the very difficult
(tackling branching processes of the kind that had to be solved by Manhattan
Project mathematician Stanislaw Ulam). In his characteristic style, Nahin
brings the problems to life with interesting and odd historical anecdotes.
Readers learn, for example, not just how to determine the optimal stopping point
in any selection process but that astronomer Johannes Kepler selected his second
wife by interviewing eleven women.

The book shows readers how to write elementary computer codes using any common
programming language, and provides solutions and line-by-line walk-throughs of
a MATLAB code for each problem.

Digital Dice will appeal to anyone who enjoys popular math or computer science.

Download File Size:18.55 MB

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