Ian Stewart Bets on His Books—Not the National Lottery

August 5, 2010

In the first article of a series on mathematics in The Daily Telegraph, emeritus mathematician Ian Stewart (Warwick University) examined how we perceive luck and chance.

Stewart began his article by recalling a conversation at the gym. “A friend of mine won seven million on the Lottery,’ said the chap next to me in the gym. ‘That’s the end of my chances. You can’t win if you know someone who has.”

While he states that there are numerous myths about the National Lottery, Stewart admits that he had never come across this particular one before.

“It set me wondering: why do people so readily believe this kind of thing?”

The chance of any set of six numbers winning the big jackpot is 1 in 13,983,816. So the explanation for the myth must lie in human psychology—and not in probability theory, observed Stewart.

“Knowing that the odds are firmly against me, and not finding the alleged thrill of gambling worth the virtual certainty of throwing my hard-earned money down the drain, I never bet on the Lottery," Steward wrote.

But Stewart has, over the years, been inadvertently betting on a different kind of lottery: writing a bestseller. "I haven’t won the jackpot (yet?), but I’ve definitely come out ahead," he wrote.

His latest book is Professor Stewart's Cabinet of Mathematical Curiosities, which features games, puzzles, facts, numbers, and mathematical nibbles.

Source: The Daily Telegraph (August 2, 2010)