How to Expect the Unexpected

A vivid, wide-ranging and delightful guide to the light and the dark side of prediction * Tim Harford, bestselling author of How to Make the World Add Up * Kit Yates presents maths as it should be taught to everyone: accessible, fun, stimulating, and deeply relevant to our lives. Spend some time with this book and you’re likely to make better judgements and decisions, to see through the charlatans and snake-oil salespeople - and perhaps even to fool yourself a little less. * Philip Ball, author of the award-winning Critical Mass * Fascinating and fun. From the everyday to global challenges, Kit Yates explores how changing your mind - so often thought to be a weakness - is the best life skill we can all acquire. A brilliant book * Professor Alice Roberts * Yates’ writing is a beacon of clarity sorely needed in a complicated and confusing world. How do we overcome our biases, understand coincidences or tackle the unreliability of our intuition? With bountiful familiar examples, he effortlessly overturns so many of our deep-rooted wrong-headed notions gently and persuasively. I’ll be quoting from this book * Jim Al-Khalili * I’m a Yates fan. His style is all-clarity-no-bullshit * Aperiodical * Seriously good * Caroline Lucas MP * Absolutely fascinating * James O’Brien * An exceptional book - readable, funny and more needed than ever * Dr Chris van Tulleken, bestselling author of Ultra-Processed People * Yates’ writing style imbues the subjects covered with an infectious enthusiasm, artfully dispelling the dry, stuffy perceptions many people have of maths * Physics World * HOW TO EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED is fascinating and (very much to the point) delightfully clear and vivid to read. Like many people, I like reading about maths without actually knowing how to do it, and part of the pleasure of reading this came from its many examples from everyday life. A splendid book! * Philip Pullman *

Kit Yates is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Mathematical Sciences and co-director of the Centre for Mathematical Biology at the University of Bath. He completed his PhD in mathematics at the University of Oxford in 2011.

His research demonstrates that mathematics can be used to describe all sorts of real-world phenomena: from embryo formation to locust swarming and from sleeping sickness to egg-shell patterning. He is particularly interested in the role that randomness plays in biology. His research into mathematical biology has been covered by the BBC, the Guardian, the Telegraph, the Daily Mail, RTE, Scientific American and Reuters amongst others. Alongside his academic position, Kit is also an author and science communicator. The Maths of Life and Death is his first book.