Introduces the ideas of probability--and the different philosophical approaches to probability--and gives a brief account of the history of development of probability theory, from Galileo and Pascal to Bayes, Laplace, Poisson, and Markov. He describes the basic probability distributions and discusses a wide range of applications in science, economics, and a variety of other contexts such as games and betting. He concludes with an intriguing discussion of coincidences and some curious paradoxes.

1. Fundamentals -- 2. The workings of probability -- 3. Historical sketch -- 4. Chance experiments -- 5. Making sense of probabilities -- 6. Games people play -- 7. Applications in science, medicine, and operations research -- 8. Other applications -- 9. Curiosities and dilemmas.