The Logic of Miracles: Making Sense of Rare, Really Rare, and Impossibly Rare Events

We live in a much more turbulent world than we like to think, but the science we use to analyze economic, financial, and statistical events mostly disregards the worlds essentially chaotic nature. We need to get used to the idea that wildly improbable events are actually part of the natural order. The renowned Hungarian mathematician and psychologist László Mér explains how the wild and mild worlds (which he names Wildovia and Mildovia) coexist, and that different laws apply to each. Even if we live in an ultimately wild universe, he argues, were better off pretending that it obeys Mildovian laws. Doing so may amount to a selffulfilling prophecy and create an island of predictability in a very rough sea. Perched on the ragged border between economics and complexity theory, Mér proposes to extend the reach of science to subjects previously considered outside its grasp: the unpredictable, unrepeatable, highly improbable events we commonly call miracles. See more