The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives (Vintage) |  | Author: Leonard Mlodinow
Publisher: Vintage
List Price: $15.00
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Seller: treebeardbooks
Rating:  118 reviews
Sales Rank: 1158
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Pages: 272
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5.1 x 0.9
ISBN: 0307275175
Dewey Decimal Number: 519.2
EAN: 9780307275172
ASIN: 0307275175
Publication Date: May 5, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
Amazon Guest Review: Stephen Hawking
Published in 1988, Stephen Hawkings 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 1995s 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 Drunkards 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
Product Description
With the born storyteller's command of narrative and imaginative approach, Leonard Mlodinow vividly demonstrates how our lives are profoundly informed by chance and randomness and how everything from wine ratings and corporate success to school grades and political polls are less reliable than we believe.
By showing us the true nature of chance and revealing the psychological illusions that cause us to misjudge the world around us, Mlodinow gives us the tools we need to make more informed decisions. From the classroom to the courtroom and from financial markets to supermarkets, Mlodinow's intriguing and illuminating look at how randomness, chance, and probability affect our daily lives will intrigue, awe, and inspire.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 118
 This book will change the way you look at the world. October 24, 2009
Sara N. Goehl
People had told me that it would change the way I look at the world, and I didn't really believe them, until I read it. I could not put it down, and recommended it to all my friends. The most interesting part was the section on how actors/musicians become famous, but the entire book is really interesting.
 Too Complicated for Me October 13, 2009
zorba (Bala Cynwyd, Pa USA)
Math and anything beyond the simplest logic is alien to me. I tried to stick it out for more than 100 pages, but I finally realized I wasn't understanding what the writer was talking about. Unlike many reviewers here, I enjoyed the stories and the biographies of medieval thinkers but couldn't understand all the probability language. I presume that this book will be enjoyable to people who understand statistics, probability and math. I don't and didn't finish the book.
Excellent October 11, 2009
Jason P. Demont (Phoenix, AZ USA)
This is a great book on randomness and on the historical development of tools to gain insight into randomness. The author's writing style is superb, and I hope that he writes more books.
 Outdated view of the normal curve October 3, 2009
Phyllis Huber
A major complaint is that this book completely ignores insights regarding the normal curve that have been achieved during the last half century. It is certainly true that historically, prominent researchers once thought normality occurs naturally, a view stemming from reading more into the central limit theorem than is warranted. About a century ago, Karl Pearson, in his first paper on statistics, coined the term normal distribution, roughly meaning that it is the curve that we expect to find. But Pearson later concluded that this view is incorrect. While the normal curve still plays an important role, it is now known that it can be highly misleading and can result in grossly inaccurate conclusions, even with large sample sizes. A nontechnical description of these insights, why practical problems were missed for so many years, and how they can be addressed, can be found in Fundamentals of Modern Statistical Methods: Substantially Improving Power and Accuracy
Good book September 26, 2009
Shawn (South Carolina)
This is a fun and informative book. It follows the progression of probability and statistics through history and shows how the concepts correlate to ones life. The only thing that kept this from being a five star book for me is that I wanted more about "how randomness rules our lives"... How minuscule random events compound on each other to thoroughly define our lives. But Mlodinow still does a very fine job in making the reader take an alternative perspective to the events that go on around him/her. I suppose I would give this book 4 1/2 stars if I could. Just don't expect the entire book to be about the drunkard's walk.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 118
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