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| The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives | 
 enlarge | Author: Leonard Mlodinow
Publisher: Allen Lane
Category: Book
List Price: £20.00
Buy New: £11.08
You Save: £8.92 (45%)
New (23) Used (3) from £11.08
Avg. Customer Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 1902
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.1 x 1.2
ISBN: 0713999225
EAN: 9780713999228
Publication Date: May 29, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
Excellent Anecdotal Introduction to How Randomness Fools Us August 14, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Have you ever flipped a coin 100 times to see the sequence of heads and tails that comes up? If you have, you know that there can be long streaks of heads and tails. Random results that end up 50-50 don't look that way in the short term.
Human perception is such that we like to find patterns where none exist. I remember the CEO of a company I worked for would draw a trend line through one data point with great authority, totally unaware of what he was doing.
More often, we judge by samples of behavior and time that are too short to be representative. Professor Mlodinow does a good job of showing how executives are often fired just before they get their best results, and how seldom the new executive does any better than the prior one.
In sports, we get all excited about streaks. Professor Mlodinow dampens that enthusiasm by pointing out that like streaks can occur randomly. We need to check to see if the streak exceeds the expected degree of variation before deciding that something significant has taken place. (But don't stop cheering on your favorite team and players.)
The book also provides lots of thumbnail sketches of the human side of those who have advanced the science and math behind our ability to measure and understand randomness. In fact, I don't recall a book on this subject with better anecdotes about the scientists and mathematicians. That's the reward in this book if you already know about randomness.
If you know nothing on the subject, this book is the gentlest possible introduction.
Enjoy!
Superb August 10, 2008
Mlodinov is a superb communicator and makes easy and delightful sense of very many confusing but fundamentally important areas. There are important concepts here for anyone interested but this book should be on the syllabus for physicians, lawyers, politicians, business executives and many more. I have already bought 5 copies for friends and colleagues. Enough said !
Intriguing Read On A Random Topic July 31, 2008
I've always been fascinated and intrigued by statistics and the laws of probability. If you too are into that sort of thing (or even if you're not), you will definitely find this book interesting and actually quite fun to read. The content really gets your mind thinking and actually expands ones views on life itself and how things work.
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 How randomness effects our lives June 24, 2008
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
If you wonder about the relevance of the statistics and 'proof' that inundate our lives then this book puts them in their place. With a nice bit of history about probability up to the present and how outcomes are not as predictable as we would like to think. It certainly added to my own feeling that with our politicalisation of 'statistical proof' in society that the wool maybe being pulled over our eyes. Everyone aught to know about probability and randomness. And this is a good place to start - an enjoyable read.
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