Acts of God and man : ruminations on risk and insurance / Michael R. Powers.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 271-274) and index.

Living with risk -- The alpha and the omega of risk the significance of mortality -- Into the unknown modeling uncertainty -- The shapes of things to come probabilities and parameters -- The value of experience independence and estimation -- It's all in your head bayesian decision making -- The realm of insurance -- Aloofness and quasi-aloofness defining insurance risks -- Trustworthy transfer; probable pooling financing insurance risks -- God-awful guessing and bad behavior solvency and underwriting -- The good, the bad, the role of risk classification -- And the lawyerly liability and government compensation -- Scientific challenges -- What is randomness? knowable and unknowable complexity -- Patterns, real and imagined observation and theory -- False choices and black boxes the costs of limited data -- Nullifying the dull hypothesis conventional versus personalized science -- Games and the mind modeling human behavior.