The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives

Great narrative style. No formulas so far, all descriptions.

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.

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.

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, SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, MILITARY INSTITUTION, BESIDES IN EVERY COLLEGE AND COLLEGE CAREER'S COUNSELING. AND IN EVERY HOSPITAL WAITING ROOM. AND IN PLACES OF WORSHIP TOO. NO PERSON CAN BE IN THE MODERN WORLD WITHOUT CONSIDERING THE ARGUMENTS IN THIS BOOK

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

I just love books like this - especially when they're as well-written as this one. The author, a physicist, proceeds to show the reader how randomness plays a much greater role in everyday life than one might think. As he discusses the basics of probability and statistics, he provides wonderful illustrations from fields as wide-ranging as sports, medicine, psychology, the stock market, etc., etc. He does an excellent job in driving home the fact that the true probability of events is not intuitive. Perhaps because of this anti-intuitiveness, I had to read a few paragraphs more than once to allow the point being made to sink in. One enigma that is particularly well explained is the Monty Hall (Let's Make a Deal) problem. The writing style is clear, accessible, very friendly, quite authoritative, engaging and often very witty. This book can be enjoyed by absolutely everyone, but I suspect that math and science buffs will savor it the most. By the way, the math-phobic need not fear: the book does not contain a single mathematical formula.