Colin Bruce: Conned Again, Watson

By MARGIE THOMSON

Scared of maths? Intimidated by statistics? A firm believer in your own intuition? You will be amazed, then - as is Watson in these salutary tales - by how very often common sense and intuition draw us to the wrong conclusions, whereas a more mathematical approach in which more attention is paid to probability and logic could see us avoiding all sorts of trouble.

Bruce is a clever mathematician who has devised this collection of cautionary tales in the manner of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, in which a series of hapless characters - gamblers, conmen, struggling students and reckless businessmen - first pull the wool over Watson's eyes, but are then exposed by the cool, mathematical logic of Holmes.

Delightful and illuminating, if a notch up from elementary.

Perseus

$71.95