The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives | 
|  | | | Title: | The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives | | Author: | Leonard Mlodinow | | Publisher: | Pantheon | | Type: | Book / Hardcover | | Publication Date: | 13 May, 2008 | | ISBN / ISBN-13: | 0375424040 / 9780375424045 | | List Price: | $24.95 | | You Save: | $8.48 | | Amazon Price: | $16.47 | |
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| Editorial Review / Publisher's Information:
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
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Customer Reviews:
• Great Book, Received From Amazon In Poor Condition When Book Was Said To Be "new" 28 August, 2008
Great book, received from Amazon in poor condition when book was said to be "new"
- Reviewed by customer ID: A2ZBSYIA4ZLB7S
• Mildly Disappointing 11 August, 2008
This is an appropriate a bathroom reader. Nothing is decribed in much depth.
Not recommended.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1T95ETTWXY6VX
• Interesting, But With A Flawed Opening Example 26 August, 2008
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 character. He embellishes the point by explaining -- via randomness theory applied to baseball -- that it was reasonable to expect that someone -- Maris or someone else -- would have broken the Babe's record.
Made sense to me.
Until I researched those "prime" years and found that they could not be depicted by the numbers Mlodinow offered. In fact, they undermined his thesis.
Maris' 1961 season was exceptional, but so was his 1960 season and his 1962 season. In baseball terms, one might characterize his "prime" years as the peak of his career arc. Lots of good players exhibit the same characteristics -- they improve until they reach a peak and then gradually decline. Most of our lives mirror this arc, albeit over a much longer period than the prime of a baseball player.
Mlodinow should know that baseball and its fans live and die by easily found statistics. I simply went to baseball-reference.com, looked up the numbers for Maris, opened up an Excel spreadsheet and computed what Mlodinow said was a given.
I'm sorry to say this baseball example was shabbily researched.
The rest of the book is much more fascinating, but I wondered if it, too, was built on overstated and unverifiable numbers. All aspects of life are not as well-documented as baseball. That is our loss.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1W7RD68DMTS3K
• Excellent Anecdotal Introduction To How Randomness Fools Us 14 August, 2008
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 need to check to see if the streak exceeds the expected degree of variation before deciding that something significant has taken place. (But don't stop cheering on your favorite team and players.)
The book also provides lots of thumbnail sketches of the human side of those who have advanced the science and math behind our ability to measure and understand randomness. In fact, I don't recall a book on this subject with better anecdotes about the scientists and mathematicians. That's the reward in this book if you already know about randomness.
If you know nothing on the subject, this book is the gentlest possible introduction.
Enjoy!
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1K1JW1C5CUSUZ
• An Extremely Enjoyable Read 15 August, 2008
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...
- Reviewed by customer ID: A26SNYM2A6U9PH
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