Conned Again, Watson: Cautionary Tales Of Logic, Math, And Probability

A clever dramatisation of issues around probability, statistics and decision theory.

I like this book. I find the writing both entertaining and informative. A few years ago, when it seemed that the book was going out of print, I managed to create a small stash of these so that I can give them as gifts to people who I believe would enjoy reading it.This being said, I read all the negative reviews, and I must say with all honesty that the criticisms leveled at the book are legitimate. If you are expecting a book of Sherlock Holmes detective stories of the original Conan Doyle's kind, you will be disappointed. In fact, this is not at all a book of detective stories and mysteries. Also, if you are an expert in mathematics, you will find most of the discussion rather shallow and unnecessarily protracted.However, if you understand well what this book isn't, there is no reason why you shouldn't enjoy the book for what it is.In this book Colin Bruce offers a nice mix of tidbits from mathematics, probability, and game theory, all presented in a belletrized form. The Sherlockian atmosphere is meant just as an entertaining backdrop. The first chapter is, I think, well written, but does not offer much substance. There are a lot more interesting bits and pieces spread throughout the rest of the book.The book is not perfect, and there are some things that I found irritating. Chapters 5 and 6 seem to be unnecessarily drawn out, with an excessively long and insipid background story. In Chapter 3, Watson says: "1 January 1900. We had entered the twentieth century!" He makes a similar remark earlier in Chapter 2. Yet, in both cases, Holmes doesn't catch on to say that actually, the twentieth century does not start until January 1, 1901.The stories in the book are meant to be happening around the year 1900. In this setting, a bunch of "historical" figures make an appearance: Lewis Carrol, Karl Marx, Lenin... But in reality, in 1900 both Karl Marx and Lewis Carrol had been dead for some time. He also plays loose with the history of aviation and technology in general. So, while the author aims to clear some confusion about matters of logic, probability and statistics, he confuses the reader with historical inaccuracies. And, as it becomes clear in the afterword, deliberately so. Also, I find distasteful the way he describes Lewis Carrol.Overall, however, I find the book utterly enjoyable, and I hope that other people will like it too. Each chapter is a small self-contained story and there is no unifying plot line, so you can possibly read the book from any place, without losing anything of the story.

5 stars for a creative idea and a well executed book; 3 stars for likelihood of attracting readers who will enjoy and benefit from reading it. The author has written twelve 20-page stories featuring Sherlock Holmes, each intended to illustrate a common logical error. There is a nicely wide-ranging choice of such errors, many but not all from my own field of Probability (e.g. the gambler's fallacy, birthday paradox, Prisoner's Dilemma, Bayes calculations). The author largely succeeds in copying the tone of the Holmes stories (definitely a tribute, not a satire or pastiche) though unsurprisingly his prose is somewhat more "flat" than Conan Doyle's. And there is an extremely well written afterword giving further analysis of the logic.But who should read it? To me, we read fiction for pleasure in the moment (like playing a game) whereas in reading non-fiction we hope some of it will stick in our mind. So while this book is entertaining and informative "in the moment", it's not clear if these logical points will stick -- the contrived stories may be more of a distraction rather than an aid.Moreover the reason we make logical errors is not because we are arbitrarily stupid, but because we confuse a given setting with another, superficially similar, setting in which the argument would be correct. To my taste, a more interesting and informative general account of the psychology involved is given in the  Predictably Irrational  style of book. And as for the specific errors, to fully internalize a point you need to understand not only examples where the error is made but also superficially similar examples where the error is not made; this is hard to do via fiction. Predictably Irrational

Love this book as it tells stories in the style of Sherlock Holmes stories and have good probability lessons embedded. I used one story with a group of 7th graders in an integrated Math/ELA lesson when I was a substitute for the class. Enjoyable experience for all of us. (I am a retired math teacher who enjoys probability lessons.)

Excellent mind-boggling stories based in math and statistics.