That's the title of a chapter (PDF) excerpted from Picturing the Uncertain World. Even if you're not a statistician by trade, it's an interesting read. The subject is De Moivre's equation, and the author makes a great argument that people's misunderstanding of the equation has led to “billions of dollars of loss over centuries, yielding untold hardship.”

A long discussion of the chapter is here at Metafilter.