Chapter 1

I. J. Good, Probability and the Weighing of Evidence (Griffin, 1950). Jack Good worked with Alan Turing on the Enigma project at Bletchley Park, and later at Manchester University.

L. J. Savage, The Foundations of Statistics (Wiley, 1954). Jimmie Savage was a leader of the subjective approach to probability.

Chapter 3

W. Feller, An Introduction to Probability Theory and Its Applications , Vol. I (Editions, 1950, 1957, 1968). Unsurpassed in its influence.

I. Hacking, The Emergence of Probability (Cambridge University Press, 1975). Authoritative, highly respected.

A. N. Kolmogorov,　Foundations of the Theory of Probability , 2nd edn. (Chelsea, 1956). (The original publication in 1933 was Grundbegriffe der Wahrscheinlichtkeitsrechnung .)

S. M. Stigler, The History of Statistics (Harvard University Press, 1986). Scholarly work, meticulously researched.

I. Todhunter, A History of the Mathematical Theory of Probability from the Time of Pascal to that of Laplace (Chelsea, 1949). The chapter on Laplace contributes almost a quarter of this comprehensive work.

Chapter 4

D. J. Hand, Statistics: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2008). Very readable account from a President of the Royal Statistical Society.

Chapter 5

B. Goldacre, Bad Science (Harper Perennial, 2008). Mainly about misuses of statistics in medical science, full of good sense.

Chapter 6

N. Henze and H. Riedwyl,　How To Win More (A. K. Peters, 1998). The subtitle ‘Strategies for increasing a lottery win’ tells it all.

E. O. Thorp, Beat the Dealer (Vintage Books, 1966). Made Thorp famous, but his fortune came from the stock market, not casinos.

Chapter 7

J. Fan and R. A. Levine, ‘To Amnio or Not To Amnio: That Is the Decision for Bayes’, Chance , 20(3) (2007). The full account, outlined in this book.

RAND Corporation, One Million Random Digits, with 100,000 Normal Deviates (RAND, 1955). Contains exactly what it says on the tin.

Chapter 8

Significance , 2(1) (2005). This journal contains several useful articles about probability and the law, including Peter Donnelly’s ‘Appealing Statistics’, and Tony Gardner-Medwin’s ‘What probability should a jury address?’.

Websites and other publications

Several public-spirited groups and individuals post or update material germane to probability on the internet. In no particular order, I recommend:

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~chance/ takes you to the Chance website of Dartmouth College, with a variety of useful links, including the archive of ‘Chance News’, video and audio material.

http://www.mathcs.carleton.edu/probweb/ is aimed at researchers and teachers, but others will also be pleased to see the list of books, newsgroups, pertinent quotes, and miscellaneous information.

http://www.plus.maths.org/ The very readable online　Plus magazine frequently contains probability material among its articles.

For accurate information on gambling odds in a host of games, Michael Shackleford has set up　http://www.wizardofodds.com/ where your query may well be answered.

Significance is the magazine of the Royal Statistical Society. No formal qualifications are needed to join the RSS, merely an interest in statistics.

Statistical Science is a mainstream academic journal; several issues contain highly illuminating ‘conversations’ with distinguished probabilists who talk candidly about their careers.