Since time immemorial man has developed ways of coping with the seemingly unpredictable vicissitudes of his existence. But the modern age was not content with the old incantations of the shamans and magicians. Which is why superstition and irrationality were replaced by probability, and people no longer spoke of fate but of chance.

Mathematicians developed models that were to be of assistance both for games of chance and more weighty predictions. »Probability theory« was the magic word designed not to control the unknown but at least to transfer it into formula.

In a manner that is both serious and amusing Hans Magnus Enzensberger follows the history of mathematical theories that seek to give us security and happiness: from Gauß’ normal distribution through to weather forecasts, from actuarial theory and forecasts of share performance through to the risk avoidance that has recently failed miserably on a global scale. In this instance, but also on adventure vacations and the mathematically calculable prospects of success in finding a partner, our luck is a precarious thing. And where the term of the infinite comes into play mathematics also have a tendency to become metaphysical. For Leibniz, God was the greatest of all mathematicians, and Kurt Gödel, one of the most important mathematicians of the 20th century even tried to use predicate logic to nail down the ontological proof of God conceived in the Middle Ages.

»Seemingly, classical theory has succeeded in exactly calculating the probability of outcomes in a game of dice or throw of the coin, but this depends on them being ideal coins and dice, such as do not exist in the real world, rather probability also underlies the law of large numbers. Only when the experiment is repeated a random number of times, is the calculated value attained. However, unfortunately, nobody sits at a gaming table for an infinitely long time given that human life is fairly short. «

Windfalls