Mark Prell’s ‘What are the Odds?’ illustrates the pitfalls of assuming certainty

Published April 24, 2026 5:10am ET | Updated April 24, 2026 5:10am ET



Deciding how fast to drive, brewing better beer, and winning bar bets — Mark Prell, a respected statistician, offers a modern guide to probabilistic thinking in What are the Odds?: A Statistical Guide to Certainty in an Uncertain World. Following in the footsteps of Darrell Huff’s 1954 classic, How to Lie with Statistics, Prell underscores that probabilistic literacy is essential for everyone, not just mathematicians, to navigate a world rife with complexity and ambiguity.

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