How can you be 100 percent sure you will win a bet? Are you more likely to work in a kitchen if your last name is Baker? Ever since the dawn of human civilization, we have been trying to make predictions about what the world has in store for us. For just as long, we have been getting it wrong. Here, mathematician Kit Yates uncovers the surprising science that undergirds our predictions—and how we can use it to our advantage. Synthesizing results from math, biology, psychology, sociology, medicine, economic theory, and physics, Yates provides tools for readers to understand uncertainty and to recognize the cognitive biases that make accurate predictions so hard to come by. This book will teach you how and why predictions go wrong, help you to spot phony forecasts, and give you a better chance of getting your own predictions correct.