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Coincidences, confessions and the National Lottery: understanding the laws of lawlessness

Robert Matthews

The effects of randomness are at work throughout the universe, and affect the lives of all of us. Yet, despite our constant exposure to them, most of us have no real insight into how these effects manifest themselves. Scientists are no exception: the laws of probability were only discovered relatively recently, and then only after much error and debate. Even today randomness and probability remain deeply controversial subjects. Robert Matthews will describe some of the discoveries he has made during his research into the perception of probability. They include real-life coincidences (and ways of predicting them), a paradox that has led to miscarriages of justice, and methods of increasing the chances of making big wins on the National Lottery.

Robert Matthews read physics at Oxford University, and is now a science journalist and academic. He is currently Science Correspondent of The Sunday Telegraph, and is Visiting Fellow at the Department of Information Engineering at Aston University, Birmingham. His research interests focus mainly on applying mathematics and physics to problems not usually associated with such disciplines. As a result, his published research covers a broad spectrum of subjects, from probability and statistics to the origin of urban myths.

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