
Proof
The Art and Science of Certainty
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
$0.99/mo for the first 3 months

Pre-order for $21.83
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
-
Narrated by:
-
Nathaniel Priestley
-
By:
-
Adam Kucharski
About this listen
How do we establish what we believe? And how can we be certain that what we believe is true? And how do we convince other people that it is true? For thousands of years, from the ancient Greeks to the Arabic golden age to the modern world, science has used different methods—logical, empirical, intuitive, and more—to separate fact from fiction. But it all had the same goal: find perfect evidence and be rewarded with universal truth.
As mathematician Adam Kucharski shows, however, there is far more to proof than axioms, theories, and laws: when demonstrating that a new medical treatment works, persuading a jury of someone’s guilt, or deciding whether you trust a self-driving car, the weighing up of evidence is far from simple. To discover proof, we must reach into a thicket of errors and biases and embrace uncertainty—and never more so than when existing methods fail.
Spanning mathematics, science, politics, philosophy, and economics, this book offers the ultimate exploration of how we can find our way to proof—and, just as importantly, of how to go forward when supposed facts falter.©2025 Adam Kucharski (P)2025 Basic Books
Critic reviews
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Blueprints
- How Mathematics Shapes Creativity
- By: Marcus du Sautoy
- Narrated by: Mark Elstob
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Shakespeare has the Three Witches cast Macbeth’s lot, he uses something very weird to do it: not simply “eye of newt and toe of frog,” but the number seven. And when Hamlet claims, “To be or not to be, that is the question,” Shakespeare reaches for eleven. For Shakespeare, prime numbers were magical. And he is not alone. As Marcus du Sautoy showcases in Blueprints, creativity is inseparable from mathematics.
By: Marcus du Sautoy
-
Perfect Bet
- How Science and Math Are Taking the Luck out of Gambling
- By: Adam Kucharski
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the simple to the intricate and the audacious to the absurd, Adam Kucharski reveals the long and tangled history between betting and science and explains why gambling continues to generate insights into luck and decision making today. Covering exploits and ideas from across the globe, he meets the teams behind hedge funds that capitalize on inaccurate sports betting odds and explains how PhD-level pundits are using methods originally developed for the US nuclear program to predict sports results.
-
-
Nontechnical, wandering far beyond "gaming"
- By Philo on 04-02-16
By: Adam Kucharski
-
The Rules of Contagion
- Why Things Spread - and Why They Stop
- By: Adam Kucharski
- Narrated by: Joe Jameson
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
These days, whenever anything spreads, whether it's a YouTube fad or a political rumor, we say it went viral. But how does virality actually work? In The Rules of Contagion, epidemiologist Adam Kucharski explores topics including gun violence, online manipulation, and, of course, outbreaks of disease to show how much we get wrong about contagion, and how astonishing the real science is. Why did the president retweet a Mussolini quote as his own? Why do financial bubbles take off so quickly?
-
-
Brilliant and so relavent
- By touristth on 12-15-20
By: Adam Kucharski
-
The Art of Uncertainty
- How to Navigate Chance, Ignorance, Risk and Luck
- By: David Spiegelhalter
- Narrated by: David Spiegelhalter
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Renowned statistician David Spiegelhalter shows how we can become better at dealing with what we don't know to make smarter choices in a world so full of puzzling variables. In lucid, lively prose, Spiegelhalter guides us through the principles of probability, illustrating how they can help us think more analytically about everything from medical advice to sports to climate change forecasts.
-
-
Terrific
- By Roger March on 04-01-25
-
What Is It Like to Be an Addict?
- Understanding Substance Abuse
- By: Owen Flanagan
- Narrated by: Shawn Compton
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Flanagan has firsthand knowledge of what it is like to be an addict. That experience informs this important and novel work. He pairs the sciences that study addiction with a sophisticated view of the consciousness-brain/body relation to make his core argument: that substance addictions comprise a heterogeneous set of "psychobiosocial" behavioral disorders. He explains that substance addictions do not have one set of causes, such as self-medication or social dislocation, and they do not have one neural profile, such as a dysfunction in dopamine system.
By: Owen Flanagan
-
A Brief History of Mathematics
- Complete Series
- By: Marcus du Sautoy
- Narrated by: Marcus du Sautoy
- Length: 2 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This 10-part history of mathematics reveals the personalities behind the calculations: the passions and rivalries of mathematicians struggling to get their ideas heard. Professor Marcus du Sautoy shows how these masters of abstraction find a role in the real world and proves that mathematics is the driving force behind modern science.
-
-
not a book
- By bob on 06-22-21
By: Marcus du Sautoy
-
Blueprints
- How Mathematics Shapes Creativity
- By: Marcus du Sautoy
- Narrated by: Mark Elstob
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
When Shakespeare has the Three Witches cast Macbeth’s lot, he uses something very weird to do it: not simply “eye of newt and toe of frog,” but the number seven. And when Hamlet claims, “To be or not to be, that is the question,” Shakespeare reaches for eleven. For Shakespeare, prime numbers were magical. And he is not alone. As Marcus du Sautoy showcases in Blueprints, creativity is inseparable from mathematics.
By: Marcus du Sautoy
-
Perfect Bet
- How Science and Math Are Taking the Luck out of Gambling
- By: Adam Kucharski
- Narrated by: Jonathan Yen
- Length: 8 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the simple to the intricate and the audacious to the absurd, Adam Kucharski reveals the long and tangled history between betting and science and explains why gambling continues to generate insights into luck and decision making today. Covering exploits and ideas from across the globe, he meets the teams behind hedge funds that capitalize on inaccurate sports betting odds and explains how PhD-level pundits are using methods originally developed for the US nuclear program to predict sports results.
-
-
Nontechnical, wandering far beyond "gaming"
- By Philo on 04-02-16
By: Adam Kucharski
-
The Rules of Contagion
- Why Things Spread - and Why They Stop
- By: Adam Kucharski
- Narrated by: Joe Jameson
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
These days, whenever anything spreads, whether it's a YouTube fad or a political rumor, we say it went viral. But how does virality actually work? In The Rules of Contagion, epidemiologist Adam Kucharski explores topics including gun violence, online manipulation, and, of course, outbreaks of disease to show how much we get wrong about contagion, and how astonishing the real science is. Why did the president retweet a Mussolini quote as his own? Why do financial bubbles take off so quickly?
-
-
Brilliant and so relavent
- By touristth on 12-15-20
By: Adam Kucharski
-
The Art of Uncertainty
- How to Navigate Chance, Ignorance, Risk and Luck
- By: David Spiegelhalter
- Narrated by: David Spiegelhalter
- Length: 10 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Renowned statistician David Spiegelhalter shows how we can become better at dealing with what we don't know to make smarter choices in a world so full of puzzling variables. In lucid, lively prose, Spiegelhalter guides us through the principles of probability, illustrating how they can help us think more analytically about everything from medical advice to sports to climate change forecasts.
-
-
Terrific
- By Roger March on 04-01-25
-
What Is It Like to Be an Addict?
- Understanding Substance Abuse
- By: Owen Flanagan
- Narrated by: Shawn Compton
- Length: 10 hrs
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Flanagan has firsthand knowledge of what it is like to be an addict. That experience informs this important and novel work. He pairs the sciences that study addiction with a sophisticated view of the consciousness-brain/body relation to make his core argument: that substance addictions comprise a heterogeneous set of "psychobiosocial" behavioral disorders. He explains that substance addictions do not have one set of causes, such as self-medication or social dislocation, and they do not have one neural profile, such as a dysfunction in dopamine system.
By: Owen Flanagan
-
A Brief History of Mathematics
- Complete Series
- By: Marcus du Sautoy
- Narrated by: Marcus du Sautoy
- Length: 2 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This 10-part history of mathematics reveals the personalities behind the calculations: the passions and rivalries of mathematicians struggling to get their ideas heard. Professor Marcus du Sautoy shows how these masters of abstraction find a role in the real world and proves that mathematics is the driving force behind modern science.
-
-
not a book
- By bob on 06-22-21
By: Marcus du Sautoy
-
Love and Math
- The Heart of Hidden Reality
- By: Edward Frenkel
- Narrated by: Mike Lenz
- Length: 10 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Love and Math, renowned mathematician Edward Frenkel reveals a side of math we've never seen, suffused with all the beauty and elegance of a work of art. In this heartfelt and passionate book, Frenkel shows that mathematics, far from occupying a specialist niche, goes to the heart of all matter, uniting us across cultures, time, and space.
By: Edward Frenkel
-
A Brief History of Artificial Intelligence
- What It Is, Where We Are, and Where We Are Going
- By: Michael Wooldridge
- Narrated by: Glen McCready
- Length: 8 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From Oxford's leading AI researcher comes a fun and accessible tour through the history and future of one of the most cutting edge and misunderstood field in science: artificial intelligence.
-
-
very basic.
- By Placeholder on 11-11-21
-
The Insider's Guide to Innovation @ Microsoft
- By: JoAnn Garbin, Dean Carignan, Eric Horvitz - foreword
- Narrated by: JoAnn Garbin
- Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Are there innovation truisms that hold from one initiative to the next? Are there strategies that appear again and again in the success stories of businesses as varied as gaming and cloud infrastructure? Are there behaviors common to creative leadership in every role, from research to sales? And if these patterns exist, could they be distilled into teachable practices? These are the questions Dean Carignan and JoAnn Garbin, two senior innovation leaders at Microsoft, set out to answer.
By: JoAnn Garbin, and others
-
Everything Is Predictable
- How Bayesian Statistics Explain Our World
- By: Tom Chivers
- Narrated by: Tom Chivers
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
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?
-
-
I was looking forward to this. What a disappointment.
- By Alessandro Fadini on 06-28-24
By: Tom Chivers
-
How Not to Invest
- The ideas, numbers, and behaviors that destroy wealth—and how to avoid them
- By: Barry Ritholtz
- Narrated by: Barry Ritholtz, Nathan Adams Stark - foreword
- Length: 13 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
How Not To Invest shows you a few simple tools and models that will help you avoid the most common mistakes people make with their money. Learn these, and you are ahead of 98% of your peers. Make fewer errors, end up with more money. We all make mistakes. The goal with this book is to help you make fewer of them, and to have the mistakes you do make be less expensive.
-
-
As objective and unbiased as it will probably ever get
- By quadturbo on 03-27-25
By: Barry Ritholtz
-
The Trading Game
- A Confession
- By: Gary Stevenson
- Narrated by: Gary Stevenson
- Length: 12 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Ever since he was a kid, kicking broken soccer balls on the run-down streets of East London, Gary Stevenson dreamed of something bigger. As luck would have it, he was good at numbers. At the London School of Economics, wearing tracksuits and sneakers, Stevenson shocked his posh classmates by winning a competition called “The Trading Game.” The prize? A golden ticket to a new life, as the youngest trader at Citibank.
-
-
Great substance and storytelling
- By Daniel Tunkelang on 03-07-24
By: Gary Stevenson