Book Review: What’s Luck Got to Do with It? The History, Mathematics, and Psychology of the Gambler’s Illusion by Joseph Mazur

This review of Joseph Mazur\u27s book on the history of gambling, for a general audience, is in three parts, paralleling the structure of the book. The first part briefly outlines Mazur\u27s coverage of the history of probability from prehistory to the present day, with a focus on gambling. The second part examines the relationship between the mathematics of gambling and probability theory, and summarizes classical problems in probability arising from gambling such as Galileo\u27s dice and the Pascal-Fermat problem of points. The third part, on psychology, discusses the gambler\u27s illusion and psychological motivations for gambling