How to Not Be Wrong: Week #3

During this week, our group read chapters 8 through 10, which doesn't seem a lot but each chapter is comprised of many sections where the author elaborates some of his points while some are explanations and facts about mathematical histories and theories. Me and my group members agreed that the author is making no definite point because he keeps going back to the topics of his previous chapters or starts off with a new topic before he finishes the old one. But, wrote down some of the main points the author repeats in the chapters.
A point that the author talks about through chapters 8-10 is chance. He says that many, if not most things, happen because of chance but we are not fully aware that most of the things that happen around us is chance. He tells us that most of what happens in our daily lives are natural occurrences, such us waking up in the morning, but, the author says that waking was only a chance of you not dying in your sleep. He further explains by using the probability of someone winning the lottery. We often think that winning the lottery happens once in a lifetime and it's almost impossible to win it twice. However, there is a slim chance that you can win twice, and usually we think of this as unnatural, in contrast to the natural occurrences that happen in our lives, but as the author says, everything happens by chance.
Another point the author makes is to take things into consideration. He says this throughout the book because it's essential in solving a math problem or drawing a hypothesis. The author tells us to make sure our assumptions and evidence is plausible or could be argued against by something that makes more sense. He gives us an example of a 1000 rooms with 1000 roulette wheels each and a player/spinner on each roulette. The player has to spin the roulette four times and it either lands on black or red, and we have to determine which sets of combinations appear more than the rest. In this case, it seems relatively easy for we can guess which combinations are most common, but the author tells us to consider our options; the speed of the roulette, the amount of people who actually want to play, and the null combinations. Basically, the author tells us to consider all the different possibilities where you could be wrong before you go around and make a fool of yourself.
Lastly, our book club meeting went really well. Once we were done with our roles, our discussion director asked us some very interesting questions and each of us had our own inquiry and answer.