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The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives
by: Leonard Mlodinow

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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 519.2
EAN: 9780375424045
ISBN: 0375424040
Label: Pantheon
Manufacturer: Pantheon
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 272
Publication Date: May 13, 2008
Publisher: Pantheon
Release Date: May 13, 2008
Sales Rank: 490
Studio: Pantheon

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Editorial Review:

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.

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

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Great book, received from Amazon in poor condition when book was said to be "new"
Great book, received from Amazon in poor condition when book was said to be "new"

Rating:

- Interesting, but with a flawed opening example
Mlodinow's work is solid and entertaining, but I was surprised at his introductory anecdote of when he was drawn to studying randomness.

I love baseball and revel in its stories. The tale of Roger Maris' star-crossed home run-filled season in 1961 has been written about so much that even someone too young to recall its details, like me, has now read enough to know the facts. Too bad that Mlodinow doesn't.

Aside from the odd suggestion that athletic feats are as random as flipping a coin, I could accept the interest Mlodinow had in studying whether the Maris accomplishment in 1961 -- breaking Babe Ruth's 34 year old home run record by hitting a 61st home run -- was as out of character as it seemed.

Mlodinow provides a basis -- Maris' rate of hitting home runs in his "prime" years -- and then explains logically how the rate during the record-setting year was not much out of ... Read More

Rating:

- An extremely enjoyable read
It is always a pleasure to find an author who can write about complex issues and make the writing lucid and entertaining! Leonard does just this. I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the forces which influence our lives...

Rating:

- Excellent Anecdotal Introduction to How Randomness Fools Us
Have you ever flipped a coin 100 times to see the sequence of heads and tails that comes up? If you have, you know that there can be long streaks of heads and tails. Random results that end up 50-50 don't look that way in the short term.

Human perception is such that we like to find patterns where none exist. I remember the CEO of a company I worked for would draw a trend line through one data point with great authority, totally unaware of what he was doing.

More often, we judge by samples of behavior and time that are too short to be representative. Professor Mlodinow does a good job of showing how executives are often fired just before they get their best results, and how seldom the new executive does any better than the prior one.

In sports, we get all excited about streaks. Professor Mlodinow dampens that enthusiasm by pointing out that like streaks can occur randomly. We ... Read More

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