Everything Is Predictable Audiobook By Tom Chivers cover art

Everything Is Predictable

How Bayesian Statistics Explain Our World

Preview
Try for $0.00
Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Everything Is Predictable

By: Tom Chivers
Narrated by: Tom Chivers
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $18.74

Buy for $18.74

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use, License, and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

About this listen

“Bayes’s moment has clearly arrived.” —The Wall Street Journal

A captivating and user-friendly tour of Bayes’s theorem and its global impact on modern life from the acclaimed science writer and author of The Rationalist’s Guide to the Galaxy.

At its simplest, Bayes’s theorem describes the probability of an event, based on prior knowledge of conditions that might be related to the event. But in Everything Is Predictable, Tom Chivers lays out how it affects every aspect of our lives. He explains why highly accurate screening tests can lead to false positives and how a failure to account for it in court has put innocent people in jail. A cornerstone of rational thought, many argue that Bayes’s theorem is a description of almost everything.

But who was the man who lent his name to this theorem? How did an 18th-century Presbyterian minister and amateur mathematician uncover a theorem that would affect fields as diverse as medicine, law, and artificial intelligence?

Fusing biography, razor-sharp science writing, and intellectual history, Everything Is Predictable is an entertaining tour of Bayes’s theorem and its impact on modern life, showing how a single compelling idea can have far reaching consequences.

©2024 Tom Chivers (P)2024 Simon & Schuster Audio
Mathematics
adbl_web_global_use_to_activate_T1_webcro805_stickypopup
All stars
Most relevant  
Great book, forced to buy hard copy.
A companion to Bernoulli's Fallacy. Probability theory is used to control how we think, it's always a good idea to investigate why some conclude what they do.

Hard to listen to

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

...how one behaves and how one might be behaving optimally. And the reader performes and reads with proper deference.

Great opportunity to ponder...

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

The author makes Bayesian statistics comprehensible and then goes on to real world applications and some history as to how classical statistics sometimes yields bad science. Great listen.

Great explanations of apply Bayesian logic

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Great overview of Bayes - funny and informative. Author does an excellent job narrating his own text. Highly recommend.

The best Bayes overview for layman

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

The ending or culmination of the book is fantastic. It was presented well with a perfect reading.

Bayes everywhere Now I see him!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Great voice. Great content. Wish this author would create more. This text is welcoming to novice minds on the subject matter. It also does a great job giving some historical background. Would love more on free energy theory.

Great topic spoken in simple terms!

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Loved this book for its content & sprinkling of humor. I’m already a student or Bayesian statistics, complexity theory & AI. So, this listen was right up my alley. It gave me new insights on all these topics, and tied them all together once again. If you are already familiar with Bayesian theory, I highly recommend this listen to get more in depth, novel insights & some practical applications. The material didn’t call for great leaps of narration, so I only gave it 4 stars in that regard. But, the use of humor was a really nice touch.

Great listen on Bayes

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

I was familiar with the subject but this book did a great job explaining it.

The author reads his own work well. His humor is a welcome relief to trying to understanding the concept.

Well worth your time

Excellent book

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

Unfortunately the book is all around underwhelming.

There is not enough thinking and information about Bayes theorem, the narration is dull, everything lacks vibrancy.

The book is extremely meandering.
I forced myself to finish it, because I bought it full price.


I was very motivated to learn about Bayes thinking and the depth of it, in connection to Less Wrong and all the other zeitgeist. Or at least I wanted to be entertained.

I was bitterly disappointed on both counts.

I was looking forward to this. What a disappointment.

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.