|
The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives (Vintage) |  | Author: Leonard Mlodinow
Publisher: Vintage
List Price: $15.00
Buy New: $7.48
as of 9/4/2010 03:22 CDT details
You Save: $7.52 (50%)
New (48) Used (28) from $7.48
Seller: BRILANTI BOOKS
Rating:  154 reviews
Sales Rank: 1021
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Pages: 272
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.8 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
| |
| Features:
| • | ISBN13: 9780307275172 | | • | Condition: New | | • | Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed |
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
| |
| Editorial Reviews:
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.
|
| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 154
Too Sober August 16, 2010
Arthur Ashendorf (Newport Beach, CA USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Another book trying to escape a book. Mlodinow desperately wants to push the theme: humans make errors because they are not only not wired to incorporate random outcomes in their analysis, but also are wired to impart patterns to outcomes that are actually random. The law of small numbers is an example of this. This is the double wammy that makes us dumber than rats in some behavioral studies. Unfortunately, the author barely comes close. Instead, 80% of the book covers the history of probabilistic thinking through statistics through the mathematics of error which culminates into the useful math of statistical mechanics.
The stories and anecdotes, Dr. Mlodinow (who has collaborated twice with Hawking!) relates are wonderful and well-told. The progression is thoughtful and coherent and interesting. Yet, the text stops well short of the math of "decision analysis,"which makes the chit-chat on poor human thinking beneath many other authors from both breezy and mathematical perspectives.
The modern editorial decision to exclude even one mathematical expression from a book on mathematics or even an illustration limits the work. While the book might read well on a Kindle(tm), books on this topic should be on an iPad/web with hyperlinks. The irony of an exceptionally intelligent author writing about the limits of human action, using weak tools that he emasculates even further, doesn't bring a smile to my face.
While this review sounds negative, it should be noted that The Drunkard's Walk is better than the average pop science/math book. Learning about Cardano's development of outcomes in a sample space was inspiring and the restatement of the importance of Bayes, without putting him down, was uplifting. This helped counter the exasperation of reading about Bernoulli's golden theorem four times without being told what it was. De Moivre was mentioned and more could have been said of Polya's role in fully proving De Moivre's Central Limit Theorem, but 20th century math doesn't exist in the book!
In summary, Mlodinow's book joins other pop books in providing one very important value: it is a quick read that provides scaffolding for a reader, not to go further intentionally, but to allow advanced work a home in the brain later. For example, decades ago, if I had known of Riemann's great contribution to geometry, I would have realized in the years ahead why I was being taught particular items and they would have stuck better.
 Very Well Written, Accessible, and Interesting Book August 10, 2010
Sparrowhawk (New York, NY)
This book is a fascinating treatment of the topic of randomness. The author does an excellent job bringing the concepts of randomness to life with thought provoking examples. Some commonly held presumptions are convincingly dispelled (improved performance after reprimands are simply cases of regression to the mean), some head spinning logic puzzles are explained (see the example about the game show and the three doors), and some intriguing stories are told (like the Australian contingent who attempted to buy every possible combination of lottery numbers). One of the author's central tenets is that randomness has much more of an impact on results than we would like to believe. A CEO's great or poor performance is not solely a reflection of their ability. Neither Roger Maris breaking Babe Ruth's home run record and Bill Miller's incredible stock picking performance should be considered surprising based on the large population of attempts. The author is at his best, however, when he is able to utilize randomness to come up with seemingly paradoxical results. For example, if an HIV test has a 1/1000 chance of resulting in a false positive, someone who tests positive may only have a 9% chance of truly being positive!
For those interested in learning more about the history of science and mathematics, the author's previous work "Euclid's Window" is an outstanding and accessible treatment that should be a must read for any enthusiast of the topic.
This book captures the notion of Randomness and Probabilty August 4, 2010
Michael J. Lucci (retired)
A great read for one who is interested in comprehending Randomness,Probability,and Certainty. I read this book three times,each time grasping more of the fundamentals and laws governing these concepts.I purchased six additional copies of this book and distributed them to my friends.
 Is Randomness Random? July 13, 2010
R. Chou (Los Angeles, CA USA)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
One can argue that being drunk and letting go of our inhibitions makes us do random things. If so, we're surrounded by all things random in a drunken stupor. This book explores all things random in fashion where nothing really is random at all.
Perhaps it is in man's nature to understand. Why we are not able to accept randomness because we then lose control. Perhaps.
The ideas presented in the book are interesting enough where you start looking around at your surroundings to notice what appear random or not so random. Its a bit ironic.
See, all things random, we throw mathematics, science, statistics and probabilities at it. Mathematicians over centuries and centuries have been studying random phenomenon.
So yes, randomness rules our lives but are they truly random any more if we're really able to approach it in a scientific method and label it with a probability of likelihood an event will occur?
In the end, the only probability that rules our lives is 50/50. Whether it will happen, or not. Whether you do, or don't. As Shakespeare's Hamlet states, "To be or not to be..."
Interesting read June 24, 2010
Zeb E. Barnhardt Jr.
I have not finished the book, yet, but I find it to be an interesting and thought-provoking read. Despite all careful planning, fortuitous circumstances play a major role in our successes as well as our failures or changes of direction.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 154
|
|
|
CERTAIN CONTENT THAT APPEARS ON THIS SITE COMES FROM AMAZON SERVICES LLC. THIS CONTENT IS PROVIDED ‘AS IS’ AND IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE OR REMOVAL AT ANY TIME. Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
