Everything Is Predictable

I picked this one after hearing about it on a Financial Times podcast. Being a data science professional, it piqued my interest and I wanted to read it.

It's a very interesting book about the impact of Bayes theorem in our lives and its presence in our world. Through this book, Chivers has tried to shed light on its omnipresence in our day to day lives and how we are unintentionally acting as a Bayesian system when making decisions in our lives. Right from the smallest of small decisions to big life decisions.

It's very informative and for someone who's never heard of Bayes or probabilities and their role in our life, this book is a go-to book that I'd recommend. Some of the terminology would be a bit difficult to grasp for people who're unfamiliar with statistical terms like precision, specificity etc. But overall, the writer has done a good job at explaining every concept or idea in a simple and straightforward manner.

Personally, I loved the chapters titled Bayesian Science and The Bayesian Brain. Some very fascinating ideas were discussed in those chapters about how our prior beliefs shape how we view the world and our actions and decisions. And how Bayes theorem is at the heart of these decisions that we make. What the book did for me was make me further curious about reasoning and consciousness and the science of rational thinking. I have added a couple of books and authors who I'd like to read up on.

The only thing that I didn't like about this book was that I felt it was repetitive and trying to show how Bayes theorem is playing a significant role in almost every chapter. But I guess that was the whole point of this book. Additionally, I feel the chapter dedicated to the war between frequentists and bayesians could have been kept short.

I'd surely recommend this to every data professional as well as anyone who wants to understand how probabilities play a vital role in shaping our world and our understanding of it.