This is interesting material which is of use by anyone who has to evaluate situations and make decisions. Especially in today's volatile world, the ability to at least identify all possible outcomes of an event or situation can be of great value. The book left me thinking I had a better grasp of probability and situation analysis than I did going in and most of this material was not new to me. Mlodinow does a good job of covering a lot of material in an understandable way without overly dumbing down the text.

... you cannot change randomness but you can give yourself more shots on goal! It's eye-openeing that genius has a lot more to do with not giving up and trying again than common sense would predict.

The book starts with a captivating prologue:

"A few years ago a man won the Spanish national lottery with a ticket that ended in the number 48. Proud of his "accomplishment," he revealed the theory that brought him the riches. I dreamed of the number 7 for seven straight nights, he said, "and 7 times 7 is 48." Those of us with a better command of our multiplication tables might chuckle at the man's error, but we all create our own view of the world and then employ it to filter and process our perceptions, extracting meaning from the ocean of data that washes over us in daily life. And we often make errors that, though less obvious, are just as significant as his."

Now if that does not hook you, you might not be the probability person I am.

It talked about how people tend to be irrational and not consider the true probability of things happening.

A good understanding of probability can help with makeing proper decisions. A poor understanding of probability can lead to poor decisions. Its that simple.

I was also reminded of my statisics courses where I learned that small samples can be taken which that can be very accurate on the views on an overall population.

One example given was the probability of two people in a room having the same birthday. It is over 50% if there are only 23 people in the room. And it give the math to work it out.

It also talked about people's view of fate or destiny and how sometimes that can cloud people's view of randomness.

Good book.

This is a highly readable survey on randomness. It is filled with examples of how our intuitions about random events are wrong. My favorite is a description of an experiment. In it, the subjects are presented with a series of guesses about some random event--for example, wither a red or green light will appear. One method is to guess the color that appears most frequently. This is what rats do. If the green light is set to light up 80% of the time, the the rat "wins" 80% of the time. The problem with this method is it guarantees being wrong 20% of the time too. A second method is to guess "green" 80% of the time and "red" 20% of the time. This has the possibility of being right 100% of the time (if one can guess right), but over time will only average being right 68% of the time. Humans usually try to guess the pattern and, as a result, don't do as well as a rat.

This book is one part introduction to probability and one part biography of mathematicians. If that interests you, then you'll probably like it. But I'll bet you find it a snoozer and you'll find it in no way lives up to the subtitle "how randomness rules our lives".

What are the chances you would even exist to read all this?

The mind blowing thing about this book is that using something so humble as statistics as his starting point, Mlodinow manages to reach and provide inspiration on even such ultimate questions.

Along the way Mlodinow discusses the history of statistics, probability and randomness and provides some very interesting insights.

In the very beginning, serious mathematicians along with the societies they lived in eschewed the study of random events like success and failure and life and death considering them to be the very province of the Gods themselves. While all societies engaged in forms of randomness in communing with their Gods it's interesting to note that even the Bible reports the use of a probabalistic device...the Urim and Thummim...in communicating with YHWH. See 1 Samuel 14:41.

Eventually, however, the gamblers overcame such squeemishness concerning that sacredness of chance when they learned that serious study of the topic could result in serious money.

And just as understanding probability and statistics made for better gambling emerging cities like London soon learned that it also made for better governance in understanding the various vicissitudes of their birth, death and immigration rolls.

In science too, probability and statistics came to provide better models for understanding nature. Interestingly enough, Einstein's most cited paper is his 1905 masterwork on Brownian motion which described that statistical effect of subatomic collisions and their force at the microscopic level. This paper started a very small ball rolling which would eventually become the boulder of quantum mechanics.

Today, statistics, probability and randomness are also at the heart of the related studies of chaos and emergence. Chaos...also referred to as the Butterfly Effect...asserts that even so humble as the flapping of a butterflies wing can sufficiently change a system so that over time enormous consequences ensue. Emergence says that for this very reason we need to study whole systems and look at nature as processes and not things.

So what are the the chances you would even exist to read all this? Perhaps the ultimately fascinating thing about statistics is that it can meaningfully provide mathematical insight into such questions and in so doing help us to better answer them.

This book is well written. It describes how probability theory impacts on everyday life. The writing style blends in historical references with real life examples. This makes it interesting to read. Its concepts are similar to the book Innumeracy but I found this book more interesting to read because of the historical aspects.

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.

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.

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....

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....

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.

This book was both smart and funny, entertaining and quite educational. I was kind of hoping that more of the mathematic examples would be useful in everyday life, but the essence is easy: if you wanna succeed, double your failure rate. The coin is tossed, people. Buy this book.

This book was both smart and funny, entertaining and quite educational. I was kind of hoping that more of the mathematic examples would be useful in everyday life, but the essence is easy: if you wanna succeed, double your failure rate. The coin is tossed, people. Buy this book.

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.

First: this is not a textbook, so do not expect to become an expert by reading this. Second: some familiarity with probability & statistics, which I have, will be helpful. Without it, you will have to move slower - but that might make it more enjoyable.

While I wish some areas would have been expanded, the book as a whole is an enjoyable read. Mlodinow has a sense of humor and the ability to use entertaining examples of the topics.

For an enjoyable read by an intelligent and literate author, pick this one up.

I was drawn to Mlodinow's book by its subtitle, How Randomness Rules Our Lives, but was disappointed by the brief space given to how to cope in this world of randomness. The main issue is contained in the quote from Bruce Schechter, "Our brains are just not wired to do probability problems very well" (MY BRAIN IS OPEN: The Mathematical Journeys of Paul Erdos). Mlodinow can only suggest that we persist in the face of probabilistic adversity--by being steadfast, our goals may eventually align with the randomly changing course of nature.

Can we do better by understanding the world as stochastic? Consider the two-toss coin problem: given a coin faced with head (H) and tail (T), what is the probability that heads will occur on two successive tosses? The 18th century French mathematician, d'Alembert, answered that heads can occur 0, 1, or 2 times, or a 1/3 chance. The Italian gambler, Cardano, considered the solution space to be TT, TH, HT, and HH, or a 1/4 chance for two heads (HH). Both assertions are true as they stand, but Cardano's will help us more when we enter the casino. What makes Cardano's the better solution? Mlodinow does not tell us, reason and even mathematical proof are not always consistent guides to the solution.

The Monty Hall Problem (see Mlodinow) confuses many to this day, long after the correct solution has been published in the mathematical literature. Paul Erdos (and many other mathematicians) got the solution wrong, and was not convinced by a mathematical proof of the correct solution. He could accept the solution only after seeing the results of a simulation of the problem. Simulation may be our best general-purpose guide to probability problems, from the simple coin-toss problem to more difficult and useful problems like deciding the optimal mix of your stock portfolio.

Ray Kurzweil faces a similar problem with the exponential trends governing nature and technology development (The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology). Most of us mistakenly interpret these trends as linear and are astonished when the trend suddenly shoots skyward. Using his knowledge of the exponential, Kurzweil has engineered a unified device to scan text, read optical characters, translate to foreign language, and translate to voice, **correctly predicting when the required technology and marketing would converge in an affordable cell phone form factor**. A prediction assuming linear trends would likely have failed completely or resulted in a device the size of a washing machine. A stochastic simulator, driven by natural language input and engineered like Kurzweil's device, might help us start to make sense of the randomness around us.

Shifting to the realm of science fiction, Sergei Lukyanenko (The Nightwatch) writes about a secretive group of adepts, the "Others," who see the world more truly than the rest of humanity. They visualize spatio-temporal "probability fields" that they can tweak to adjust "reality lines," giving them partial control over their immediate destiny. They use this power mostly to avoid traffic collisions, to drive at breakneck speed through the streets of Moscow. Seemingly a trivial usage, but perhaps not to those who suffer daily in Moscow gridlock. Science fiction sometimes is prelude to science fact--some of humanity may already have bridged the disconnect with stochastic nature. You will never know.

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

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.

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...

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!

This is an appropriate a bathroom reader. Nothing is decribed in much depth.

Not recommended.

This book was a really fascinating read and though it makes your head hurt at some of the counterintuitive examples given, i will be recommending it strongly to my economics students.

Some unorganized reactions.

The Drunkard's Walk owes much to a classic in this field, Innumeracy by John Paulos. This book borrows much from that work in its discussion of misleading use of probabilities, with at least one story lifted directly from it, and most others coming more indirectly from Innumeracy. To those who have read that book it still offers some in terms of unintuitive probabilities, including a discussion of the infamous Monty Hall problem.

It touches areas that Innumeracy didn't though discussing psychology, statistics, and offering a history of probability/statistics. The historical ranting are rather tedious and most likely already known to the readers of this type of material or unwelcome. The dabbles into psychological aspect of why we have trouble perceiving randomness, among other such issues discussed, provide the most interesting and original aspects of the book.

The book falls very short of its stated goal of revealing how randomness runs our lives. In fact, only his discussions of statistics and anecdotes seem to bring us closer to his goal. The other points are enjoyable to read, but deal little with the supposed purpose of the book.

A good read, mostly for those unfamiliar with the Mathematics, but I find the psychological aspect of the book will make an acceptable read for those who have prior understanding of probability and statistics.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

An intriguing book with fresh perspectives. While being entertaining to read, it is simultaneously very thought-provoking and informative with fascinating "historical background side trips" that add color, depth, and interest to the chapters.

I personally found it extremely insightful. It offers more than a simple explanation of probability and how randomness can affect our lives. It is so thought-provoking as to inspire (me anyway) to review fundamental assumptions about the world and my place in it.

It is not for those who are unprepared to examine personal assumptions about how life works-- some grounding in the statistical sciences would probably be a good background as well. Nevertheless, I would encourage any thoughtful, inquisitive person to read this book. Easily one of my favorites of all time.

Instead of repeating other reviewers, let's focus on other content.

Arguments about the astronomical improbably of a DNA chance match are disingenuous. A false match can also occur because of lab error, and this is far, far more likely than a genuine DNA chance match.

Mlodinow illustrates the Bayesian principle: "...the probability that A will occur if B occurs will generally differ from the probability that B will occur if A occurs." (p. 117) About 1 in 10,000 heterosexual non-IV-drug-abusing white males are infected with HIV. As for tests of HIV infection, the rate of false negatives is about zero, and that of false positives is 1 in 1,000. So, out of 10,000 tested subjects, there will be 9, 989 negatives. Of the 11 positives, 10 will be false and 1 will be true. So only 1 in 11 individuals who test positive for HIV actually are infected with HIV. (pp. 115-116)

During WWII, German V-2 rockets often hit near each other, prompting fears that the Germans had perfected pinpoint accuracy in their targeting. It turned out that the clusters of hits were random. Most geographical clusters of cancer occurrence also are random clusters.

We learn about such things as regression toward the mean, Pascal's wager, the gambler's fallacy, and the scratched (and therefore biased) roulette wheels at Monte Carlo. Also, election recounts in very close elections are bound to differ with each recount owing solely to small random errors operating on millions and millions of votes. So no recount is necessarily more accurate than the original count.

Life expectancy applies to groups, not individuals. For instance, if the life expectancy of a 90 year-old is 6 years, it only tells us that half of 90-year olds will still be alive at 96. It does not tell us which particular 90 year-old individual will still be alive at 96.

When there are hundreds of coin tosses, it is common for strings of consecutive "heads" and "tails" to arise solely by chance. Likewise, a string of good luck or bad luck in our lives can be completely random, yet easily misinterpreted as something meaningful.

When experimental subjects are told that, by pressing a button, they are controlling actually randomly-flashing lights, they readily believe it. We want to believe that we are in control because a lack of control, or perceived lack of control, leads to stress. This is especially true in extreme situations. For instance, concentration-camp victims who survived tended to be those who established some measure of control over their horrible experiences.

This is a wonderful book for the non-technical person. It's more than just a discussion of random processes. It's a history of how the theory was developed over several hundred years, the fundamental laws upon which the theory is based, and a sprinkling of problems the solution of which defy common sense. Mr. Miodinow is trained as a scientist, but has a style of writing that is similar to some of the great authors of science like Richard Fynman and Carl Sagan who wrote books for the layman. A must read book by all.

I was just curious to understand how randomness ruled our lives. Though i found the book giving several examples and combinations which explain the randomness at the end of it I was left a little confused as to what the book actually wanted to convey to an average reader like me who wants to understand this.
I found the book more technical and though it was explained in a normal manner I still could not get through each page without reading them several times. It takes time to sink in the matter and understand this book.
I would say its average because certain chapters were good but over all after finishing the book I still dont have my answersto randomness

This is a wonderful book for understanding how random life is and how we can still live with that knowledge.

I love books, all books, but I especially love science books. This book was more than a science book though. It was inspirational. If you read through all the way to the end, then you cannot help but be inspired. Unless of course, you are a control freak. If you are one of those types of people, then you may be a bit discouraged to learn that your controlling ways are all in vain. But, if you are a optimist or an optimist in the making, then this is the book for you.

A famous French mathematician of the eighteenth century, Jean Le Rond d'Alembert, wrote several books on probability. In one, he analyzed what happens if you toss two coins. You can either get zero heads, or one, or two, he reasoned, so the chance of any of these three possibilities happening was one in three. He can easily be shown to be wrong, but he wasn't the first or last mathematician to be flummoxed by probability, so what hope do the rest of us have? The problem is even more daunting - probability, chance, chaos, or randomness has extraordinary power within many human endeavors, and none of us has intuitive capacity to calculate all odds correctly. In _The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives_ (Pantheon), Leonard Mlodinow reviews the history of how mathematicians came to an understanding of calculating probability, but he also shows how little any of us know about the actual odds. Wine ratings, CEO performance evaluations, movie studio grosses, home runs, and more are all under the encompassing sway of randomness, and while we are eager to attribute success (or failure) to the actions of humans in their endeavors, results are often not a good measurement for judging the competence of human effort.

It was really in the sixteenth century that probability got mathematized, and of course it was by a mathematician who liked to gamble. Gerolamo Cardano wrote the _Book on Games of Chance_ which showed how one could rationally analyze all the ways the dice could fall (people were using cube dice by then, not bones) and thus what numbers were more likely. Cardano would have shown d'Alembert where his error lay. Tossing two coins gives a "sample space" of head-head, head-tail, tail-head, and tail-tail, so there are four equally probable outcomes, not three. It's the same sort of calculation for figuring odds on girls and boys. There are subtleties, however, depending on how you define your sample space. If a woman has two children, and one is a girl, the odds that the other child is a girl are not fifty-fifty. The sample space you are dealing with is girl-girl, girl-boy, and boy-girl; by specifying one is a girl, you eliminate the possibility of boy-boy. Each of the remaining three possibilities have equal likelihoods, and only one has a girl as that second child, so the odds in this case are one out of three. There are not only puzzles here, but real-world examples like the O.J. Simpson trial. When lawyer Alan Dershowitz was faced with the prosecution's depiction of Simpson as a wife abuser, he countered with statistics that showed that in America, although millions of wives are battered every year, only 1 of 2,500 is murdered. Something swayed that jury, and perhaps this was part of it. What Dershowitz didn't give is the more relevant percentage odds: 90% of battered women who are murdered are killed by their abusers. There are fascinating ideas here about variations in normal populations and variations in measurement. Mlodinow shows that we often overestimate how much control people have. He draws many examples from sports, winetasting, or the business world, and demonstrates conclusively that success or failure depends heavily on pure chance, even though we like to give credit or blame to people who are only nominally in charge.

Mlodinow keeps things light. He is careful with how much mathematics he inflicts upon the reader. In discussing the famous Monty Hall problem, he advises that it requires no mathematical training, but "... it does require some careful logical thought, so if you are reading this while watching _Simpsons_ reruns, you might want to postpone one activity or the other. The good news is it goes on for only a few pages." In one lesson after another, he shows that pure random variation, our ability to see patterns when there is only chaos, and our eagerness to attribute outcomes to action rather than to chance cause us to think we have much more control than we really do. This might be a pessimistic message; as Mlodinow shows in many examples, circumstances beyond our control are what are really in control. This ought, however, to help us be gentler with ourselves and with our neighbors. It also shows, as he points out, that with chance playing such a large role, we have to seize every opportunity we can, and he quotes IBM pioneer Thomas Watson: "If you want to succeed, double your failure rate."

The Drunkards walk is a great book that explains most things about statistics that most people never learned or ignore .It gets a little technical sometimes but overall has lots of insightful information .Decisions makers just need to pay more attention .

'The Drunkard's Walk' includes a history of probability and statistics and relates the subject to modern-day life. In some respects, it is disappointing not to see any equations for combinations or probabilities, even in an appendix [...]. What is included is an excellent background in the logic behind setting up probabilities such as Bayes' theorem applied to medical statistics, when the likelihood of a disease is small.
Mlodinow's writing is entertaining and well suited for readers with a formal background in statistics and probability.

I've always been fascinated and intrigued by statistics and the laws of probability. If you too are into that sort of thing (or even if you're not), you will definitely find this book interesting and actually quite fun to read. The content really gets your mind thinking and actually expands ones views on life itself and how things work.

Real Life Dramas - Volume One

Darren G. Burton

If you're not versed in probability this is an excellent book to introduce you to the history and importance of probability in daily life. Its an easy and interesting read. Much of the book however is dedicated to explaining mathematical basics & history. If you already know what a normal distribution is, this book falls a little short in really linking randomness and how we perceive success. Only one or two chapters at the end are devoted to this.

I was waiting for someone to write an in-depth and fascinating book about the wild and wierd aspects of probability theory in our lives. It is broader and more informative than Nassim Taleb's Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets and avoids the bitterness infused all through Taleb's book.

But for practical consequences of probability theory I prefer Hubbard's How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of "Intangibles" in Business. Hubbard takes the more fascinating aspects of probability theory, combines it with the odd errors of human thought processes, and prescribes a method to crack open many mysteries in business and governement with measurements.

Consider books like Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game and Freakonomics [Revised and Expanded]: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything and we see a wave of popular books in the last few years about what used to be considered the "dull" field of statistics. I'm glad the American public is choosing to become more literate in this field.

A very enjoyable read. The author takes what is a very complicated topic and makes it easy to understand and very interesting.

A Drunkard's Walk is a very well written view of not only of randomness, as suggested by the title, but also gives the reader an insight on probability and statistics that will open eyes and raise questions about the "certainty" that our public figures give us, based upon dubious analysis. This is a must read for anyone who believes we should question conclusions that are fed to us, rather than giving way to blind acceptance.

Although this was a difficult topic for a person not up to date with math, it was very informative, pointing out the great effect that randomness has on one's life. Both frightening and reassuring

Excellent book. In essence a probability/statistics 101 class presented in a very entertaining and humorous fashion. A compelling argument for the role chance plays in our lives and at the same time the power of persistence. A must read.

An amazing traverse across the landscape of randomness that makes sense to scientist and layperson alike. I thought Euclid's Window was readable and clear, but Drunkard's Walk makes sense of an incredibly random world in a concise, clear, and thoughtful way. A "should read" for everyone in a management job who is looking for those insights that could propel your operations beyond the ordinary by understanding the universe as it is. The examples are concrete and compelling.

The author says nothing new on the topic, nor does he say it in a way that is apt to make a dent in the "willful consciousness" of many who insist on a world of clear-cut cause and effect or on a Divine Will that keeps its eye not merely on a sparrow but on a nation's military actions or on human behaviors provoking retributions (hurricanes, etc.) upon its godless practitioners. In all such instances, the distinction between cause-effect thinking and predestined events that happen by necessity is lost. Instead, it all comes down to the pragmatic need of an inherently egocentric human nature to impose order where circumstances may not justify it.

The author writes to the layman, making the language of statistics, probability, randomness a fascinating read. It's clear that he's well aware of the fallacies and delusions (and consequent harm) to which most of us are easy prey. But he leaves it to the reader to draw any philosophical-theological inferences about the need for greater humility. His immediate goal is to help the reader understand the distinction between 1. the "common-sense" logic employed by self-serving finite beings coping with problems in the material world and 2. a "scientific method" that takes nothing for granted in a universe of perpetual flux. More miraculous than either the accomplishments of the romantic hero or the intercessions of a supreme being (everyday stuff for most of us) is the rare discovery that two things (or "events" in the spatial-temporal order) suspected of being connected (a hypothesis) in fact cannot be shown "not" to have such a relationship (the proof).

Such a small yield is unlikely to satisfy most of us, let alone a creationist or a supporter of intelligent design--in other words, it's not more propagandist "proof-texting" and weird science; it's "real" science. And those who take it upon themselves to help us understand the universe as it is, merit a reader's undivided attention. Highly recommended for the genuinely curious.

The author says nothing new on the topic, nor does he say it in a way that is apt to make a dent in the "willful consciousness" of many who insist on a world of clear-cut cause and effect or on a Divine Will that keeps its eye not merely on the eye of the sparrow but on a nation's military actions or on human behaviors likely to incur retributions (hurricanes, etc.) upon its godless practitioners. In all such instances, the distinction between cause-effect thinking and predestined events that happen by necessity is lost. Instead, it all comes down to the pragmatic need of an inherently egocentric human nature to impose order where circumstances may not justify it.

The author writes to the layman, making the language of statistics, probability, randomness a fascinating read. It's clear that he's well aware of the fallacies and delusions (and consequent harm) to which most of us are easy prey. But he leaves it to the reader to draw any philosophical-theological inferences about the need for greater humility. His immediate goal is to help the reader understand the distinction between 1. the "common-sense" logic employed by self-serving finite beings coping with problems in the material world and 2. a "scientific method" that takes nothing for granted in a universe of perpetual flux. More miraculous than either the accomplishments of the romantic hero or the intercessions of a supreme being (everyday stuff for most of us) is the rare discovery that two things (or "events" in the spatial-temporal order) suspected of being connected (a hypothesis) in fact cannot be shown "not" to have such a relationship (the proof).

Such a small yield is unlikely to satisfy most of us, let alone a creationist or a supporter of intelligent design--in other words, it's not more propagandist "proof-texting" and weird science; it's "real" science. And those who take it upon themselves to help us understand the universe as it is, merit a reader's undivided attention. Highly recommended for the genuinely curious.

I do not know how to explain this book because it is so good. Its lessons are useful in business strategy, in evaluating the Iraq war, in deciding whether the Feds should lower interest rates and in planning one's own career. It is simply put the Best Book of the Year.

The author covers the growth and evolution of theories of probability, what he calls theories of randomness, and ties it together with anecdotes one cannot find in any other book on the subject. Yes, it is just as readable as Peter Bernstein's classic Against the Gods and far more thoughtful (and less arogant) than Fooled by Randomness by Nasim Taleb. The author is the co-author with Stephen Hawking of the Briefer History of Time and unless he has a ghost writer, is easily the best writer of non-fiction of the serious kind. His prose is perfect, his choice of anecdotes appropriate, his domain expertise unmatched.

The book ends unexpectedly but poignantly, about his aunt's awful fate at a Nazi death camp. Honestly, I respect the author's prerogative but I wish it was in an epilogue. It is too serious a subject and takes the mind to another dimension, to be read at the last minute, that too in a book with so much to think about anyway.

THIS SHOULD BE AN ADDITIONAL READING IN EVERY COURSE IN BUSINESS SCHOOL, SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT AND MILITARY INSTITUTION, BESIDES IN EVERY COLLEGE

This smart book will make you think. Academic yet easy to read, it explores how random events shape the world and how human intuition fights that fact. I found this point fascinating. It never occurred to me that our brains naturally want to see patterns and order, and life doesn't necessarily work like that.

It's comforting to think of an orderly world, with everything in its place, running according to plan. It dovetails into our yearning for meaning and control, and the need to feel that we are important. The idea of randomness is frightening. If the world is shaped without conscious decision, it's a pretty chilly prospect.

Author Leonard Mlodinow examines the importance of randomness in diverse situations, including Las Vegas roulette tables, "Let's Make a Deal," the career of Bruce Willis, and the Warsaw ghetto after Hitler invaded Poland. The author does a good job explaining how chance and luck are vital factors in how things turn out.

The cover has a nice touch. On the dust jacket, several die-cut holes reveal letters on the hardback underneath. The letters are the R and D in "Drunkard's," the A in "Walk," the N in "Randomness," the O in "Our" and the M in Mlodinow. These letters are connected by a thin red line. They spell out "RANDOM."

Here's the chapter list:

1. Peering through the Eyepiece of Randomness
2. The Laws of Truths and Half-Truths
3. Finding Your Way Through a Space of Possibilities
4. Tracking the Pathways to Success
5. The Dueling Laws of Large and Small Numbers
6. False Positives and Positive Fallacies
7. Measurement and the Law of Errors
8. The Order in Chaos
9. Illusions of Patterns and Patterns of Illusion
10. The Drunkard's Walk