The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow
Vintage, $15.00, 252pp, tp, 9780307275172. Science.
Leonard Mlodinow really knows how to tell a good story. Even when his subject matter is something as (seemingly) dry as statistics and the theory of randomness, Mlodinow has made The Drunkard’s Walk a real page-turner. He takes as his starting point the fact that our brains have evolved to see patterns where they don’t exist, and thus to completely misunderstand randomness. But, he says, randomness is everywhere, and we can improve our lot in life by learning to recognize randomness where it is, and recognize that there’s a difference between seeming randomness and actual randomness. But Mlodinow is very facile at tying it in to the real world in which we live, writing about Roger Maris’ 61-home-run season (was it because Maris was that good, or should we have expected someone to hit that many at some point?), wine ratings and prices (is there really a difference between an 89 and a 90, other than the price?), grades in school (can a teacher really tell the difference between a 91 and a 93, or an A and a B?), stock-picking ability and financial managers (is anyone any better at it than anyone else?), and more.
In addition to teaching about math we ought to know, Mlodinow also opens the mind and the door to further study, talking about the history of the discovery of randomness and odds (they’re not just for gambling). He discusses the now-famous Let’s Make a Deal problem, the odds of having two daughters, Zeno’s paradox, and just how to confuse a jury with those self-same numbers.
The book, unfortunately, stumbles in the final chapter (which, ironically, shares its title with the book). To quote the end of the penultimate chapter: “We began with simple rules and went on to learn how they reflect themselves in complex systems. How great is the role of chance in that most important complex system of all—our personal destiny? That’s a difficult question… and thought I can’t hope to answer it fully, I do hope to shed light on it.” He stumbles through Lorenz’s discovery of randomness theory, and picks a bunch of examples of how, while things are obvious in hindsight, there isn’t much we can do to see those patterns before they make themselves obvious.
Nevertheless, the personalities in the book are almost as fascinating as the topic. Mlodinow here introduced me to 16th century physician and polymath Gerolamo Cardano, who I’ll have to read more about. And he transformed Pascal’s triangle from just an interesting collection of numbers to something that actually means something.
I recommend this book for when you need a break from fiction, or if you’re interested in adding a mathematical bent to your writing. Good book!