The Drunkard's Walk: 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....