Everything Is Predictable: How Bayes' Remarkable Theorem Explains the World
Chivers (Tom)
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Back Cover Blurb


Reviews
  • Life is shot through with uncertainty, but in this fascinating, witty and perspective-shifting book, Tom Chivers shows why this needn't condemn us to powerlessness and panic. I finished Everything Is Predictable not only better informed about a captivating branch of mathematics, but with an invigorating sense of greater purchase on the world
    → Oliver Burkeman
  • One thing that is perfectly predictable is that Tom Chivers writes terrific books. This one is no exception: it's witty, lively and best of all, extremely nerdy. I learned a lot and so will you
    → Tim Harford
  • A remarkable book by a remarkable writer about a remarkable theorem. The statistical chance of it not changing how you see the world forever is zero
    → Will Storr
  • Everything Is Predictable is one of those books that makes you feel smarter with every page you read. It should be required reading for anyone engaged in evidence-based decision-making - and I guess that means all of us
    → Philip Ball
  • From assessing the effectiveness of treatments, to the way consciousness works and the way we make decisions, Tom Chivers makes a compelling case that Bayes' theorem is the one formula that everyone should understand
    → Ananyo Bhattacharya
  • From an eighteenth-century cleric to the workings of the brain, Chivers explores the impact of Bayes' theorem; the mathematical basis for learning under uncertainty. After neatly summarising the history of probability and statistics, he handles challenging and controversial Bayesian approach to scientific evidence, induction, decision-making, statistical modelling, prediction, and human perception and reasoning. All with his customary light touch, and full of quotes and vivid stories. A filling but very tasty book
    → David Spiegelhalter
  • Life is a poker game where we are all trying to make the best decisions we can based on the limited amount of information we have. This book is about an equation, devised in 1763, which describes - mathematically - how we do that
    → Irish Times
  • Entertaining . . . both enthralling and relatively easy to understand. I can't remember when I last enjoyed a popular maths book so much. It's a delight
    → Brian Clegg ― Popular Science

Notes
  1. This is a popular refresher which I intend to read while out walking Bertie the dog.
  2. This is an important topic that relates to my Thesis Note on Probability1.
  3. I have a lot of heavier-duty material on this topic, which needs sorting out:-
  4. Books (19 reference, including):-
    → "Earman (John) - Bayes or Bust? A Critical Examination of Bayesian Confirmation Theory"
    → "Howson (Colin) & Urbach (Peter) - Scientific Reasoning: The Bayesian Approach"
  5. Papers2 (51 reference, including):-
    → "Curd (Martin) & Cover (J.A.) - Confirmation and Relevance: Bayesian Approaches: Introduction and Commentary"
    → "Gardenfors (Peter) & Sahlin (Nils-Eric) - Introduction: Bayesian Decision Theory - Foundations and Problems"
    → "Glymour (Clark) - Why I am Not a Bayesian"
    → "Hawthorne (John) - Degree-of-Belief and Degree-of-Support: Why Bayesians Need Both Notions"
    → "Horwich (Paul) - Wittgensteinian Bayesianism"
    → "Owen (David) - Hume Versus Price on Miracles and Prior Probabilities: Testimony and the Bayesian Calculation"
    → "Salmon (Wesley) - Rationality and Objectivity in Science or Tom Kuhn Meets Tom Bayes"
    → "Smith (Martin) - Intuitionistic Probability and the Bayesian Objection to Dogmatism"
    → "Sobel (Jordan) - On the Evidence of Testimony for Miracles: A Bayesian Interpretation of David Hume's Analysis"
    → "Swinburne (Richard) - Bayes, God, and the Multiverse"
    → "Titelbaum (Michael G.) - How to think like a Bayesian"
    → "Weatherson (Brian) - The Bayesian and the Dogmatist"
  6. Other potentially-interesting papers3 not selected above:-
    → "Adler (Jonathan) - Epistemological Problems of Testimony"
    → "Augustine (Keith) & Fishman (Yonatan I.) - The Dualist’s Dilemma: The High Cost of Reconciling Neuroscience with a Soul"
    → ... to be continued.
  7. Web Links:-
    → Aeon: Video - Bayes's theorem, and making probability intuitive
    → Aeon: Titelbaum - How to think like a Bayesian
    → Jonathan Weisberg: Odds And Ends - Chapter 8: Bayes' Theorem
    → SEP: Lin - Bayesian Epistemology
    → SEP: Joyce - Bayes’ Theorem
    → Wikipedia: Bayes' Theorem
  8. See also my undergraduate Essay on Induction4.


In-Page Footnotes ("Chivers (Tom) - Everything Is Predictable: How Bayes' Remarkable Theorem Explains the World")

Footnote 2: Footnote 3:
Book Comment


Text Colour Conventions (see disclaimer)
  1. Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2026
  2. Mauve: Text by correspondent(s) or other author(s); © the author(s)


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