What's Luck Got to Do with It? The History, Mathematics, and Psychology of the Gambler's Illusion

This review of Joseph Mazur's book on the history of gambling, for a general audience, is in three parts, paralleling the structure of the book. The first part briefly outlines Mazur's coverage of the history of probability from prehistory to the present day, with a focus on gambling. The second part examines the relationship between the mathematics of gambling and probability theory, and summarizes classical problems in probability arising from gambling such as Galileo's dice and the Pascal-Fermat problem of points. The third part, on psychology, discusses the gambler's illusion and psychological motivations for gambling.