The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day

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Coincidences happen, incredibly unlikely things occur, and the apparently miraculous comes about. The improbability principle says that such extraordinarily improbable events are commonplace. It shows that this is not a contradiction, but that we should expect identical lottery numbers to come up more than once, lightning to strike twice, and financial crashes to occur.

Professor David J. Hand is Senior Research Investigator and Emeritus Professor of Mathematics at Imperial College, London. His applications interests include psychology, physics, and the retail credit industry - he and his research group won the 2012 Credit Collections and Risk Award for Contributions to the Credit Industry. He was made OBE for services to research and innovation in 2013.

His latest book, The Improbability Principle, appeared in February 2014. Each regular gathering starts with the Fortmanteau by Scott Wood, our with our monthly round-up of fortean news stories from the month.