| The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives | 
 enlarge | Author: Leonard Mlodinow
Publisher: Pantheon
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $16.47
You Save: $8.48 (34%)
New (44) Used (10) from $14.60
Avg. Customer Rating:  51 reviews
Sales Rank: 266
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 24 hours
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| Customer Reviews:
 6 Stars December 1, 2008
Nutshell review - This is a really great book - one of my favourites. Mlodinow writes an intelligent and elegant book on how random events in our lives play a much larger role than what we usually give credit to. Random events account for more than our innate ability and skills and we should be thankful for those random events that have a positive impact on our lives. This is an excellent book written in a very accessible style. 6 stars.
 A Drunkard's Review November 19, 2008
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.
A great take home message ... November 17, 2008
... 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.
If you like probabiliy, you will probabily like this book November 13, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
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.
Excellent history of randomness November 2, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
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.
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