People in all walks of life--poker players, politicians, scientists, and investors--constantly make choices and take risks. The modern world would fail to exist without the tools we routinely apply to evaluate and control those risks we take. The great success story begins a thousand years ago with a group of bold thinkers who embarked on a remarkable adventure of intellectual discovery, transforming superstition into the powerful tools of risk control that we use today. These scientific and mathematical pioneers discovered New uses for numbers, determining the extent to which the past can affect the future. TO 1200: BEGINNINGS. · The Winds of the Greeks and the Role of the Dice. · As Easy As I, II, III. 1200-1700: A THOUSAND OUTSTANDING FACTS. · The Renaissance Gambler. · The French Connection. · The Remarkable Notions of the Remarkable Notions Man. 1700-1900: MEASUREMENT UNLIMITED. · Considering the Nature of Man. · The Search for Moral Certainty. · The Supreme Law of Unreason. · The Man with the Sprained Brain. · Peapods and Perils. · The Fabric of Felicity. 1900-1960: CLOUDS OF VAGUENESS AND THE DEMAND FOR PRECISION. · The Measure of Our Ignorance. · The Radically Distinct Notion. · The Man Who Counted Everything Except Calories. · The Strange Case of the Anonymous Stockbroker. DEGREES OF BELIEF: EXPLORING UNCERTAINTY. · The Failure of Invariance. · The Theory Police. · The Fantastic System of Side Bets. · Awaiting The Wildness.