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The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives | 
 enlarge | Author: Leonard Mlodinow
Publisher: Pantheon
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $14.00
You Save: $10.95 (44%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  28 reviews
Sales Rank: 169
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6 x 1.2
ISBN: 0375424040
Dewey Decimal Number: 519.2
EAN: 9780375424045
ASIN: 0375424040
Publication Date: May 13, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new condition, with dust jacket. Never read.
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Amazon.com
Amazon Guest Review: Stephen Hawking
Published in 1988, Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time became perhaps one of the unlikeliest bestsellers in history: a not-so-dumbed-down exploration of physics and the universe that occupied the London Sunday Times bestseller list for 237 weeks. Later successes include 1995's A Briefer History of Time, The Universe in a Nutshell, and God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs that Changed History. Stephen Hawking is Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge.  In The Drunkard's Walk Leonard Mlodinow provides readers with a wonderfully readable guide to how the mathematical laws of randomness affect our lives. With insight he shows how the hallmarks of chance are apparent in the course of events all around us. The understanding of randomness has brought about profound changes in the way we view our surroundings, and our universe. I am pleased that Leonard has skillfully explained this important branch of mathematics. --Stephen Hawking
Product Description
In this irreverent and illuminating book, acclaimed writer and scientist Leonard Mlodinow shows us how randomness, change, and probability reveal a tremendous amount about our daily lives, and how we misunderstand the significance of everything from a casual conversation to a major financial setback. As a result, successes and failures in life are often attributed to clear and obvious cases, when in actuality they are more profoundly influenced by chance.
The rise and fall of your favorite movie star of the most reviled CEO--in fact, of all our destinies--reflects as much as planning and innate abilities. Even the legendary Roger Maris, who beat Babe Ruth's single-season home run record, was in all likelihood not great but just lucky. And it might be shocking to realize that you are twice as likely to be killed in a car accident on your way to buying a lottery ticket than you are to win the lottery.
How could it have happened that a wine was given five out of five stars, the highest rating, in one journal and in another it was called the worst wine of the decade? Mlodinow vividly demonstrates how wine ratings, school grades, political polls, and many other things in daily life are less reliable than we believe. By showing us the true nature of change and revealing the psychological illusions that cause us to misjudge the world around us, Mlodinow gives fresh insight into what is really meaningful and how we can make decisions based on a deeper truth. From the classroom to the courtroom, from financial markets to supermarkets, from the doctor's office to the Oval Office, Mlodinow's insights will intrigue, awe, and inspire.
Offering readers not only a tour of randomness, chance, and probability but also a new way of looking at the world, this original, unexpected journey reminds us that much in our lives is about as predictable as the steps of a stumbling man fresh from a night at the bar.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 23 more reviews...
 Very good book that states something I have thought for some time. July 25, 2008
Mlodinow has a good track record of making complicated subjects accessible to the average person. This book extends his track record. As a computational chemist/physicist, I am someone who is very familiar with the idea of randomness. Having done many Monte Carlo simulations myself, I had the thought that our lives are much like Brownian trajectories. That is, the direction our lives take is only partially dictated by our abilities, and the remainder is due to random unforeseeable forces that push us about. This is Mlodinow's thesis in his book which he presents in an easy to read and entertaining manner.
Even with a strong background in math this book renewed my interest in probability. My conclusion is that you will enjoy this book no matter what your exposure probability and statistics.
 The last two chapters are brilliant! July 23, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The author is clearly knowledgeable and tries to explain probability and other mathematical theories clearly with good examples. He also includes a basic history of mathematical thought which I found fascinating. Chapters 9 and 10 depart from the theory-discussion and talk about how randomness impacts our lives and was much easier to understand. I liked Mlodinow's writing style and found his approach very warm and friendly - even if some of the concepts are difficult to understand.
 Let's talk of the drunkard's crazy walk with temptation July 19, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Here's a curious focus on how the cards are dealt, rather than who the dealer is. Despite all the erudite reviews, I believe there is an unfortunate omission of the factors resulting from crazy behavior. When the drunk drinks, he gets drunk. He KNOWS he'll reap disaster. But exercising his own willpower, he drinks anyway; he gets drunk anyway; and he reaps disaster any way.Cured! Proven Help for Alcoholics and Addicts. Then the drunk returns again to repeat the march back to the vomit and the mire. Mathematics may look on all this as random. But there is a completely different approach. Early AAs favored the Book of James and considered it absolutely essential to their program.The James Club and the Original A.A. Program's Absolute Essentials. Why? For one thing, its very first chapter presents the compelling choice. One can choose, with unwavering belief, to seek God's wisdom, strength, and guidance. Or he can choose to pursue temptation, enticement, disaster and death. The answer is still part of the first chapter. "Do not err, my beloved brethren." "Be ye doers of the word, not hearers only, deceiving your own selves." Self-deception is not random. It's nuts. Yielding to temptation is not random. It's nuts. Dying at the end of the process is not random. It's assured. And it's nuts too. Well, that's the choice - God or transgression of God's rules. Drunkenness is a no no. The drinker pursues it at his peril if he is an alcoholic.God and Alcoholism: Our Growing Opportunity in the 21st Century. And even alcoholism is not random. It may come from genes. It may come from bad friends and bad behavior. It may come from stress and distress. Or it may come from chemical imbalance. The scientists like to experiment with controlled conditions. The alcoholics like to drink in uncontrolled conditions. And it's crazy. So then comes the Book of James again with the early A.A. solution: James 4:7 says: "Submit yourselves therefore to God; resist the devil, and he will flee from you." In other words, if you can't hack it yourself, humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord and He will lift you up (James 4:10).When Early AAs Were Cured and Why, Third Edition. If all this seems too "spiritual" or too "religious," that's OK with me. But he who overlooks the wiles of the Adversary and the very present availability of the Creator's help is nut making a random choice in a random situation. He's just failing to put on the whole armor of God in recognition of the slings and arrows of the Adversary. So I'd add some other factors to this picture: temptation, the devil, and God. And their contrasting roles were well laid out in John 10:10.Why Early A.A. Succeeded: The Good Book in Alcoholics Anonymous Yesterday and Today God Bless, Dick B.
Liberating July 18, 2008
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
First, if you are bad at math,like me, most of this book is beyond reach or can at best be half understood. While he writes well, and makes a great effort to be clear, his talents can't overcome my brain wiring.(I have read over the Monty Hall deal three times and still don't get it). But when my knowledge and his explanations sync, there are great insights : regression to the mean(in any series of random events an exrtraordinary one is most likely to be followed by an ordinary one by chance; the insight is used in explaining how we confuse cause and effect); good thoughts on availability and confirmation bias; thoughts on why some businesses do well and others do not(same territory as "The Halo Effect"). But the gem is the last chapter, its title the same as the book's, where he says:give yourself a break, stuff happens both bad and good for no reason other than it does, but never forget that success may come your way if you are open to the universe and keep swinging away. "What I've learned , above all, is to keep marching forward because the best news is that since chance does play a role, one important factor in success is under our control: the number of at bats, the number of chances taken, the number of opportunities seized...or as IBM pioneer Thomas Watson said,"If you want to succeed, double your failure rate." The chapter is worth the price of the book.
challenging, but really interesting July 17, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
this is a great book, but it made my brain hurt.
basically, the drunkard's walk is a history of the mathematical study of randomness, including physics, probability, normal distribution, and other concepts. but, really, it's a look at the role that randomness plays in our lives, and how most things are quantifiably less random than they may seem.
there were dozens of times, while reading, that i thought, that makes complete sense, but i can't imagine that i'm going to remember it. this was often because the proof of the theory made sense at an objective level when explained, but was counter-intuitive to real life and regular ol' human thinking. a great example of this is the author's extended explanation of the marilyn vos savant "let's make a deal" problem. marilyn vos savant writes a column in parade magazine where she answers questions from readers, using her "world's record highest iq". she famously responded to a question, years ago, that posed this problem:
if a contestant on "let's make a deal" (the 70s game show) were given three doors to choose from, and told that a new car was behind one of them, and lousy prizes behind the other two; then, after choosing a door, and having monty hall reveal one of the remaining doors as a loser prize and given the opportunity to shift choice on the remaining two, should the contestant make the change? her response was that, statistically -- yes, the odds are better if the contestant changes her answer.
people freaked at her response, including lots of professional mathematicians, who (wrongly) argued that, with two remaining choices, the chances are still 50/50 that the car is behind the door of the contestant's original choosing.
the proof of this fallacy is all based on probability computations. the contestant's original choice had a 33% chance of being correct -- or 1 in 3. but monty hall removed one of those three (knowing which doors had the good and loser prizes). so, sticking with the original choice still leaves the original probability of 1 in 3. but changing choices raises the probability to 1 in 2 -- better odds.
the author acknowledges that while this kind of proof is true, and mathematically observable, it's contrary to how our brains are wired to consider options.
that said, it was this kind of story - the book has hundreds of them -- and the author's wittiness, that kept me reading through the brain strain.
oh, btw, the title refers to the term scientists use to describe the path of atoms and sub-atomic particles -- seemingly random as they carom off each other in a willy-nilly path. ultimately, this path is not actually random, but is merely beyond our ability to compute, based on the absurd quantity of possibilities rising from interactions with other moving particles.
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