The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives | 
 enlarge | Author: Leonard Mlodinow
Publisher: Pantheon
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $14.05
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Avg. Customer Rating:  43 reviews
Sales Rank: 516
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.1
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.1
ISBN: 0375424040
Dewey Decimal Number: 519.2
EAN: 9780375424045
ASIN: 0375424040
Publication Date: May 13, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
Amazon Guest Review: Stephen Hawking
Published in 1988, Stephen Hawkings 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 1995s 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 Drunkards 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 38 more reviews...
 Marvelous! Marvelous! Marvelous! October 2, 2008
As a teacher of high school mathematics and statistics, I have read many such books on the subject at hand. Few of them are as readable and enjoyable as The Drunkard's Walk.
What Mlodinow's brings to the table is a great sense of humor and a writing style that is entertaining and engaging, with great stories to go along with the mathematical ideas he shares. He brings in historical anecdotes and psychological research to highlight how mathematical truth and human perception clash. I found myself very impressed by his ability to bring in the perfect study or story to illustrate a point.
Essentially, the book is a course in Statistics 101, but reading it, you'd never know. It is geared to the average intelligent reader, but there are few mathematical formulas or abstractions. Enjoy!
Other related books and how they compare:
Against the Gods- The Remarkable Story of Risk: Much drier. More detail, less fun.
Fooled By Randomness: Arrogant writing style, too philosophical for my taste. Focus on the markets.
Damn Lies and Statistics: Narrow focus on how Statistics can mislead. Good examples, though not as entertaining.
Chances Are: A good read, similar content, though this is more engaging.
Innumeracy: A must read classic by Paulos.
Predictably Irrational: Fun book, similar style but more about behavioral economics (overlaps last chapter of this book)
Sway: Pretty good, but not as overarching as Predictably Irrational
SuperCrunchers: Unimpressive book that I thought didn't prove thesis well.
 Entertaining, vivid and fun September 26, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is a lot of fun. It's an eye-opening jaunt through the surprisingly colorful world of randomness. Interspersed are the vivid stories of those who discovered some of the most powerful mathematical tools ever conceived: Cardano the gambler, the Bernouilli clan (including the villainous Jakob!) and Blaise Pascal (who conceived a wager on the existence of God).
The insights from probability and statistics have a direct impact on our lives whether it is assessing the real chance you have a life-threatening disease, to deciding how and where to invest your money. They also account for some of the strange coincidences you read and wonder about in the paper. How was it that a German 6/49 lottery in 1995 drew the very same 6 numbers in two consecutive draws?
Then there is the tragic misuse of numbers: Sally Clark in Britain who was convicted of murdering her children by a prosecutor using bad statistics; and the OJ Simpson case where the acquittal was partly based on an erroneous probability argument.
I would give this book 5 stars if not for one quibble. Some of the explanatory language for the mathematical concepts could have been made clearer. For example the section on Bayes theorem and false positives could have benefited from diagrams. Visualizing the different sample subsets would help make this easier to understand. The explanation of the classic 'Let's Make A Deal' has been done before but here there is no extra attempt to make it accessible.
Despite this concern, this book is well worth the effort for the educated layperson.
Statistic expalined without maths September 20, 2008
This is an excellent background to the concepts behind statistics, randomness and probability, all without any of those nasty equations, or a single mathematical symbol in sight.
Well written and easy to understand. This is an excellent primer for anyone wondering about what statistics is good for or how randomness works.
Should be compulsory for every uni student who procrastinates about stats homework because it all seems pointless and just maths....
Fascinating book that will change your perspective on life! September 19, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I originally checked this book out from the library, but it was so good that I had to buy it. It is an amazing look at chance, randomness, probability and how all those things factor into daily life.
This book explains probabilities and chance better than anything else I have ever read. While he explains mathematical concepts, he keeps the book grounded with practical and engaging anecdotes. For example, he explains the counterintuitive reality that though he tested postive for HIV in a test that had a 1 in 1000 rate of false positives, he actually had only a 9% chance of actually having HIV.
This book should be required reading for everyone--especially public policy makers, who routinely display a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of randomness in life.
You won't be disappointed with The Drunkard's Walk.
Me layman. Say this book good. September 14, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book reminded me quite a lot of The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki, another popular science/math book that I enjoyed and got some insights out of. This one, though maybe not as well written as Surowiecki's book, offered me even more insight and interest; not only did I love reading it, I feel like it has given me an opportunity to change much about my outlook on life, and only in good ways.
A lot of the book is taken up with the history of the study of randomness and chance, starting with an Italian physician and scientist named Gerolamo Cardano, who made a fortune by learning how to gamble intelligently, in a time when people believed games of chance were controlled by the fates, or by God. Cardano paid attention to what rolls of the dice came up more often than others, and used the information to make better bets; he wrote a book about what he learned after it paid his way through medical school and carried him past a bitter feud with the other doctors of Milan -- who didn't like Cardano because he had written another book that pointed out that they were a bunch of quacks. The most interesting part of the history, to me, was the new knowledge that most of the great mathematicians of the past were, well, pretty messed up. I wonder if it has something to do with having a mathematical mind in a disorganized and messy world, especially in the European Middle Ages, a society so focused on determinism and fatalism that they believed that attempting to understand the world was basically blasphemy, as it implied that you could understand the mind of God. But whatever the reason, the list of mathematicians who contributed to the study of randomness include religious zealots, liars, thieves, and madmen; it was most entertaining to read about.
My favorite part of the book, though, was the conclusions that Mlodinow drew from this history, and from what we have learned about randomness in the last few centuries. The biggest ones for me were these: first, that random chance influences the outcomes of every chain of events, everywhere in the universe, and every second of our lives, and second, that we don't understand this truth. Because of this, we believe that we can control things that we can't, and we see patterns where there are none; I've never read a better explanation of hindsight's apparent clarity, and it's something I plan to spend quite a bit of time pondering. The other inspirational conclusion Mlodinow drew was the idea that failure, and success, are both influenced far more by random chance than we normally believe. He says that our failures do not represent a lack of ability, but show the inevitability of chance's influence on the world; we do not fail for a reason, not always. More importantly, we do not succeed for a reason, either, and so the key to success, and to overcoming failure, is truly just to keep trying, to never lose faith -- because if there's one thing we can have faith in, it is this: random chance will sometimes put us under the bar, and sometimes, it will put us over. We will win, we will succeed, as long as we keep putting ourselves out there. Knowing that the reason we fail is often no reason at all, but merely dumb luck, should help us to overcome the agony of defeat and keep trying until the dice fall our way.
I liked that message more than I can say, and I'm extremely glad I got to read it.
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