The Drunkard's Walk

How Randomness Rules Our Lives

By: Leonard Mlodinow

Narrated by: Sean Pratt

Length: 9 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's summary

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.

©2008 Leonard Mlodinow (P)2008 Gildan Media Corp

Critic reviews

"A wonderful guide to how the mathematical laws of randomness affect our lives." (Stephen Hawking)
"If you're strong enough to have some of your favorite assumptions challenged, please listen to The Drunkard's Walk....a history, explanation, and exaltation of probability theory....The results are mind-bending." ( Fortune)

Excellent book

Where does The Drunkard's Walk rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

This is an excellent book that presents an innovative way of looking at the world around us.

What did you like best about this story?

The individual examples were excellent. Some were so complex, however, that it would have been better to read the book than to listen.

Mathematics, fun!

Absolutely brilliant narration of a great story. Real examples and completely un-put-downable. Never knew you could like Maths!

Amazing

One of the best books I read in my life. It shows you how randomness play a vital role in your life!!

Brilliant book.

It's a brilliant book. Fascinating stories about the historical figures in science. Best explanation of randomness I've ever encountered.

Excellent layman book that goes above and beyond

An excellent book, originally thought it would be a kind of Freakanomics for statistics, and anticipated an entertaining, but a vapid tour of how statistics can shed light on everyday phenomenon etc.

However, it's more a historical tour of the development of probability and statistics during the age of amateur mathematics, starting with Cardano, in the 1500s, and ending with Laplace in the 1800s.

The book does an excellent job not only in the history, but actually constructing motivational problems throughout the narrative, and going through an organized approach to their solutions. All of which is accomplished via set partitioning and counting arguments, and all of it written in natural language, not mathematics or a formal language. This isn't a mathematics textbook, and shouldn't be judged as such. These chapters would fit well as motivational backgrounders to an actual intro to probability classes.

Lots to be learned, including the fact that Cardano figured so greatly at the foundation of probability, I only knew his work with respect to the classical theory of equations in algebra. In fact, almost all of the great mathematicians in the classical era are mentioned and their contributions to the field briefly explained in a natural and unforced manner.

Only in the end does the book get a bit Freakonomics-like, but provides some thoughtful discussion on whether ones salary/wealth truly indicates anything about oneself, or it too is better looked on as a type of stochastic process. This leads to a discussion on how society treats higher salaried / wealthier individuals and how people often attribute greater competence/value to them, and whether this is justified given a stochastically informed purview.

Comically, the author uses Donald Trump as an "obvious" counterexample for such views, which I'm sure from 2008, he could never have imagined would become President. What does that say about the presidential selection process? Excellent book, highly recommended to anyone, technical or not.

Don't let the math scare you

Any additional comments?

Fascinating history of our struggle to understand chance and randomness with enough examples thrown in to make it easy to understand. We get lucky a lot more often than we care to admit. The section on CEO performance was eye opening and a good example of how we need to believe we have control over things we do not.

Learn After You Have Learned

This book was very interesting in its explanation of statistical probability and randomness. I have an understanding of the majority of this book based because of my degree, but it was interesting to hear how these ideas relate to other areas of society. The history of these ideas also made the story entertaining and flow well. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys math and science and would like to know how they are used in a less scientific area.

Humbling and empowering, nihilistic and freeing

It is hard, after reading this book, to come away thinking we have control over our successes or failures.

Should be mandatory reading

Even if you have no interest in math, this book is easy to read and little is lost by not worrying about the math and instead focusing on the lesson that are derived from the math. Those lessons are valuable life lessons!

Very Enjoyable, although at times hard to follow

Overall I really enjoyed this book. However, due to the nature of the topic and level of mathematical curiosity that is likely to be developed by the reader, it can at times be hard to listen to in a typical audiobook style. That’s assuming you’re one who listens while driving or doing other repetitive tasks. With all that said, take the Chance to enjoy the book and Persist through any obstacles, surely then you will be rewarded.