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)

Enjoy Math for Once!

Would you listen to The Drunkard's Walk again? Why?

Yes. This was enjoyable and informative. How could it get better?

Who was your favorite character and why?

Any additional comments?

Good for overall understanding of randomness!

This book gives a good overview of how we can fool ourselves to thing better or worse then what really is.

Excellent treatise on randomness

This book shows that randomness has a significant impact on all of us and that we are often blind to it. The book is well written and entertaining.

for Don

For Don - check your download page, there should be part 2 there available for you to download (I actually wrote support about this and they were extremely helpful).

And yes, this book is quite interesting with lots of practical examples. Recommended.

Great Tangents.

This was a great read. One of the things that made this book stand out was its telling of the main story and all of its great side stories. It didn't take too much time with the side stories that you wanted to skip ahead or were bored. Another thing was the way that the book was put together with a great climatic end.

Why You Should Rethink Your Worldveiw

This book was fairly technical and some people who have not been taught or read up on probability and statistics may have to reread/relisten some sections a few times or read up on the material. That being said I really enjoyed this book, it may have been technical and not suited to be a easy beach read (you know unless you into that... I know I am). This book really gets at the finer points of randomness and very much like the title implies how its rules your life and how you don't think it does. If you take the authors word on the information that is being said (and I believe you should) it will crush your misconceptions of many thoughts, ideas and assumptions that seem to be falsely engrained in society and popular culture. The story is also very well done, with many actual examples mixed with his particular humor that the author has faced in his life, including being misdiagnosed with HIV and the prob/stats related. Overall this is a great technical book and I would highly recommend it to anyone with a basic understanding of prob/stats (or a willingness to learn) and want to understand the world from a different perspective.

A different perspective on the world

I enjoyed listening to this book because it pointed out the misconceptions that we encounter in every day life in terms of understanding success, luck, and chance. Be aware: some parts of this book tend to "read" a bit like a statistics text book.

Enlightening view of the random in life

What did you love best about The Drunkard's Walk?

The examples and how they are shared really brings home how true randomness fills our everyday. It also shares why we have trouble letting go and believing in the random.

Highly proababe you will love this book

What did you love best about The Drunkard's Walk?

You will love this book if you love stats and probability. A very very interesting tale of how these subjects govern our lives to a great extent. Highly recommended

So good I bought the book.

Surprisingly entertaining. Not nearly as dry as I had expected based on some of the other reviews. As usual with Audible books though, the delivery is lethargic and you need to listen with the speed ramped up to at least 150%.
I would recommend just sitting back and listening to the flow of logic and the history of the subject.
If you want a reference book you might need a text version.