The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives
by Leonard Mlodinow
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Book Summary Information
Author: Leonard MlodinowEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2008-05-13
ISBN: 0375424040
Number of pages: 272
Publisher: Pantheon
Book Reviews of The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives
Book Review: must read !! - can save your butt - but title is misleading, has other problems too
Summary: 2 Stars
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This book has some extremely good points, but way too many bad ones too. Parts of it deserve a 10star rating, but others deserve a big minus score. Overall 2stars is generous but misleading due to the wild variations in quality throughout the book.
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You need to read this book to protect yourself should you ever be involved in a legal case. Misuse of probability and statistics helps prosecutors to nifong innocent people (which is unfortunately not a rare situation) like the eponymous rogue prosecutor in the Duke lacrosse case tried to do. Math errors used in court trials are explained. Real life example given - reversed on appeal when logical fallacies were finally brought to light. A real eye opener.
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Learn why what you see on CSI is not the actual truth. And see why the evidence does not say what they claim it does, in too many cases. DNA is not as reliable as they would have you believe. But not for the reasons they use to prove it is. Another logical fallacy exposed. Radar guns are not as reliable either. Don't be fooled if you are on a jury.
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That being said, much of the rest of the book is filler. And the title is misleading. Randomness does NOT RULE our lives, it merely affects them.
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This would be one good magazine article, if all the errors and mistakes were corrected, and the padding removed.
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Outliers by Gladwell would do a better job of addressing the supposed theme of this book.
The Black Swan by Taleb would blow a hole in another of Mladinow's errors concerning normal curves.
Apparently Leonard believes everything is normally distributed even when it is physically impossible for it to be. Some of this might be the carelessness noted below wrt typos , but in some cases apparently it is just another gross logical mistake.
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The book has too many typos and grammatical errors that change the meaning andor make it hard to understand what was actually meant.
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Unfortunately it also has a lot of logical errors that are just plain wrong. Often very subtle errors, but still errors.
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If you are an engineer, scientist, mathematician, or had a course in probability, you should know all of this stuff already. The only reason to read it would be to see how to protect yourself in court, and to correctly understand what a doctor tells you (which is often wrong wrt things that involve probability and risk).
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If you are a liberal arts type, then this book would give you an easy overview of a number of probability/statistic concepts as applied to real life.
But if you are that type, it is unlikely you care about this subject anyway. So read it for the good info on the legal system and interpreting what you doctor tells you about your chances to live.
But if you read it anyway, don't get fooled into believing everything that was said. Much of it is contradictory with other chapters, andor just plain wrong. Some of it due to bad grammar, but some due to bad logic.
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A doctor mistakenly told Mladinow that his chances of survival were slim fat and none. Fortunately the problem was not with the odds of survival but with the grade the doctor deserves for using bad logic and abusing probability with his erroneous conclusion.
(See the part with Bayes Theorem and how it changes what the doctor thought he knew about the odds).
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The author believes in global warming even though the overwhelming majority of QUALIFIED ANALYSTS that understand statistics say we are in a global cooling trend.
Who should you believe when it comes to probability and statistics? Some weather guy who can't tell you what the weather will be ten days from now, let alone in the future, or someone trained in analysing data correctly? Or worse, someone with an agenda that is willing to lie by omitting contradictory data in order to get their way in controlling our lives??
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There are too many absolute statements given without proof. And many of them are wrong or at least debatable.
Teachers are not paid too little. They are paid what the free market says they are worth based on supply and demand.
Or they are really overpaid because the unions distort the marketplace. But they are not underpaid.
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Mladinow assumes or asserts that many things are random when that is not the actual case. And he overstates the effect of randomness in many cases, totally discounting the skill of the people wrt their results.
Yes, bad luck keeps good folks from succeeding, and some schmucks hit it big on luck, but for the rest of us, hard work, education, and persistence make up a BIG part of what happens.
But is luck going to let some minor A-league pitcher win the world series? Or would you rather start a proven major league quality pitcher and don't pay no nevermind to the speed of the pitcher or his menu of pitches nor how much his curve ball breaks - like Mladinow does??
I would prefer the major league pitcher and hope that he is lucky too.
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Mladinow's ego misleads him to making some bad claims. Just because HE could not see something, or you could not see it, or govt economists could not see something, does NOT mean that someone else could not and often DID foretell the problem well in advance but was ignored for politics or personal (usually financial - their gains) reasons.
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Systems engineers could have told you (and may have) that TMI was a disaster waiting to happen - and would have told you why too.
I went on the public record saying there were no WMD in irak long before the invasion. If I knew to a John McLaughlin metaphysical certitude that there were NO WMDs then they could have known too - and they may well have known but chose to lie to achieve their agendae. But randomness had nothing to do with it.
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And for all his blather about randomness he overlooks that statistical samples must be random - which in many cases they are not. Overlooking this biasing factor leads to misinterpreting poll results. But he does make some good points about the margin of error (although not wrt the margin itself but the interpretation of it - if it were correct!).
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He alludes to things like 11 classes of error in astronomy, but never tells us what they are. With all the padding, this would have been better to include.
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Read this at the library. It is not worth owning. But it is worth reading for the few good parts. Hopefully you won't believe the parts that are wrong.
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FWIW - I did 5 years of graduate work in math and have an MS in math and PhD in CS. I worked for many years analysing data and systems. Currently writing an article on logical fallacies for a national magazine.
Summary of The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives
In this irreverent and illuminating book, acclaimed writer and scientist Leonard Mlodinow shows us how randomness, change, 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 cases, when in actuality they are more profoundly influenced by chance.The rise and fall of your favorite movie star of the most reviled CEO--in fact, of all our destinies--reflects as much as planning and innate abilities. Even the legendary Roger Maris, who beat Babe Ruth's single-season home run record, was in all likelihood not great but just lucky. And it might be shocking to realize that you are twice as likely to be killed in a car accident on your way to buying a lottery ticket than you are to win the lottery.
How could it have happened that a wine was given five out of five stars, the highest rating, in one journal and in another it was called the worst wine of the decade? Mlodinow vividly demonstrates how 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 change 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 readers 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 fresh from a night at the bar.
Amazon Guest Review: Stephen Hawking
Published in 1988, Stephen Hawking?s A Brief History of Time became perhaps one of the unlikeliest bestsellers in history: a not-so-dumbed-down exploration of physics and the universe that occupied the London Sunday Times bestseller list for 237 weeks. Later successes include 1995?s A Briefer History of Time, The Universe in a Nutshell, and God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs that Changed History. Stephen Hawking is Lucasian Professor of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge.
In The Drunkard?s Walk Leonard Mlodinow provides readers with a wonderfully readable guide to how the mathematical laws of randomness affect our lives. With insight he shows how the hallmarks of chance are apparent in the course of events all around us. The understanding of randomness has brought about profound changes in the way we view our surroundings, and our universe. I am pleased that Leonard has skillfully explained this important branch of mathematics. --Stephen Hawking Decision-Making & Problem Solving Books
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