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)

High quality

Complex subjects explained in a brilliant and understandable way. Mlodinov is up there with the best!

Not an easy read, but certainly worthwhile.

Once you understand the role of random events, the more the role of persistence pays off.

Excellent book

Listen at 1.5 speed, makes it much easier.
A very good book and the author keeps everything interesting.
Well worth your time

Enjoyed

This makes me want to look into probability even more now. I highly recommend this audiobook.

very good

excellent read, I read it 2x, similar to Taleb, but better and more entertaining

Very Very Smart

The author, a physicist at Cal Tech, is among those rare academics who both write beautifully, and can manage to make complex explanations understandable. This book definitely changed how I understand some fundamental aspects of my life and the lives of those around me, as getting a handle on randomness and probability (which again, our brains don't seem to be built easily to accomplish), helps illuminate some of the fundamental errors in judgment that I seem to make all too often.

A Fun History of Probability

This book takes the reader through the history of probability theory from the ancient Greeks to the present day. Along the way it points out how very educated modern men and women are often baffled by basic concepts in probability.

The narrative is spiced up by short probability puzzles relevant to the concepts being discovered by innovators in probability theory as the book moves closer to the modern day. It succeeds brilliantly in teaching mathematical concepts in an audio only format. Nevertheless, the interested listener may want to occasionally pause the narrative to solve the puzzles presented on her own.

You really need to be in a student mode

It can be a hard listen but it still has a good message if you can decipher it. Hint its in the main explanation of what the books about. You really need an analytic mind or be in the mood to follow the scientific explanations he gives.

Interesting, and OH so slow...

was a fun listen, when I could keep awake longer than 30 minutes listening to the droning....

Good intro to probability and statistics

Maybe interesting for those who do not have a scientific education, but for the others it is a quite dull and scattered 101 about statistics, probability and heuristics.
Also the author likes biographies a tad too much and continuously jumps from them to the explanation of the person's contributions to science and back.