The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our LivesNATIONAL BESTSELLER • From the classroom to the courtroom and from financial markets to supermarkets, an intriguing and illuminating look at how randomness, chance, and probability affect our daily lives that will intrigue, awe, and inspire. “Mlodinow writes in a breezy style, interspersing probabilistic mind-benders with portraits of theorists.... The result is a readable crash course in randomness.” —The New York Times Book Review 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. |
Contents
Peering through the Eyepiece of Randomness | 3 |
The Laws of Truths and HalfTruths | 21 |
Finding Your Way through a Space of Possibilities | 41 |
Tracking the Pathways to Success | 60 |
The Dueling Laws of Large and Small Numbers | 81 |
False Positives and Positive Fallacies | 104 |
Measurement and the Law of Errors | 124 |
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Common terms and phrases
Amos Tversky analysis asked assess average Bayes Bayes's believed Benford's law Bernoulli called Cardano century chance chapter coin Daniel Kahneman dice Drunkard's Walk Ellen Langer employed equal error law example expect experience fact film Gerolamo Cardano girl girl-F graph Graunt happened home run human ideas intuition Jagger Jakob Jakob Bernoulli Journal Kahneman and Tversky Laplace large number Linda look lottery Marilyn Marilyn vos Savant Maserati mathematical mathematician mean measurement ment meter million molecules Monty Hall problem named normal distribution observed occur odds outcomes Pascal Pascal's triangle patterns percent performance physics player poll possible predict probability problem Psychology question Quételet quoted random process reason researchers result sample space scientists sequence statistics streak student subjects success Theodore Porter theorem theory thing ticket tion tosses trial understanding University Press wine winning wrote York