Book Review: Physical Concepts of Probability

In the Preface the author states that he will use" ideas that are physical" and then" apply these concepts to real problems." Further to this is the implication that the author's approach is original, or that it "fills an important gap," to quote the publishers. We turn hopefully to the first two chapters-on" probability" and" events "-to find, however, the standard approach through coin-tossing, dice-throwing and card-playing experiments. The use of a dart-board as a Venn diagram is possibly non-standard, but hardly constitutes a major breakthrough! So much for originality. Apart from this, the exposition is very restricted, omitting, for instance, (even by implication) any reference to Bayes' Theorem.