The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B001BSJHRC | Format: PDF
The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives Description
In this irreverent and illuminating audiobook, acclaimed writer and scientist Leonard Mlodinow shows us how randomness, chance, and probability reveal a tremendous amount about our daily lives, and how we misunderstand the significance of everything from a casual conversation to a major financial setback. As a result, successes and failures in life are often attributed to clear and obvious causes, when in actuality they are more profoundly influenced by chance.
The rise and fall of your favorite movie star or the most reviled CEO - in fact, all our destinies - reflects chance as much as planning and innate abilities. Even Roger Maris, who beat Babe Ruth's single season home-run record, was in all likelihood not great but just lucky.
How could it have happened that a wine was given five out of five stars by one journal and called the worst wine of the decade by another? Wine ratings, school grades, political polls, and many other things in daily life 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 fresh insight into what is really meaningful and how we can make decisions based on a deeper truth. From the classroom to the courtroom, from financial markets to supermarkets, from the doctor's office to the Oval Office, Mlodinow's insights will intrigue, awe, and inspire.
Offering listeners not only a tour of randomness, chance and probability but also a new way of looking at the world, this original, unexpected journey reminds us that much in our lives is about as predictable as the steps of a stumbling man afresh from a night at a bar.
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 9 hours and 19 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Gildan Media, LLC
- Audible.com Release Date: June 23, 2008
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B001BSJHRC
Promising prologue "... when chance is involved, people's thought processes are often seriously flawed .... [this book] is about the principles that govern chance, the development of those ideas, and the way they play out in business, medicine, economics, sports, ..." but a disappointing book. The book consists of a range of topics already well covered in a dozen previous popular science style books: history of probability (Cardano, Pascal, Bernoulli, Laplace, de Moivre) and of demographic and economic data; statistical logic (Bayes rule and false positives/negatives; Galton and the regression fallacy, normal curve and measurement error, mistaking random variation as being caused); overstating predictability in business affairs (past success doesn't ensure future success) and perennials such as Monty Hall, the gambler's fallacy, and hot hands.
These topics are presented in a way that's easy to read -- historical stories, anecdotes and experiments, with almost no mathematics. So it's a perfectly acceptable read if you haven't seen any of this material before before, but it doesn't bring any novel content or viewpoint to the table. Other books are equally informative and well written but have more interesting individual focus and panache:
Dicing with Death: Chance, Risk and Health shows hows to add analysis to anecdote,
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