Dance with chance

"Makridakis, Hogarth and Gaba-business professors and risk management experts-explore the powerful role of luck in our lives. For example, it's commonly accepted that to live a long, healthy life, weight, blood pressure and cholesterol should be controlled and smoking is verboten. However, the authors cite an analysis of mortality rates that suggests that these factors have only a minimal effect on longevity-and in the case of body weight, our common knowledge might be entirely wrong. Early sections reconsider medical and investment advice in the light of the unacknowledged and unstudied role…