Leonard Mlodinow

The Drunkard's Walk (eBook, ePUB)

How Randomness Rules Our Lives

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

Leonard Mlodinow's The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives is an exhilarating, eye-opening guide to understanding our random world.

Randomness and uncertainty surround everything we do. So why are we so bad at understanding them?

The same tools that help us understand the random paths of molecules can be applied to the randomness that governs so many aspects of our everyday lives, from winning the lottery to road safety, and reveals the truth about the success of sporting heroes and film stars, and even how to make sense of a blood test.

The Drunkard's Walk reveals the psychological illusions that prevent us understanding everything from stock-picking to wine-tasting - read it, or risk becoming another victim of chance.

'A wonderfully readable guide to how the mathematical laws of randomness affect our lives' Stephen Hawking, author of A Brief History of Time

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Penguin Books Ltd
• Seitenzahl: 272
• Erscheinungstermin: 2. April 2009
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9780141920696
• Artikelnr.: 39188036

Autorenporträt

Leonard Mlodinow is a theoretical physicist and writer who has taught at Caltech and the Max Planck Institute of Physics. With Stephen Hawking, he co-authored two best-selling books: A Briefer History of Time and The Grand Design. He is also the best-selling author of The Drunkard's Walk, Subliminal and Elastic.

Inhaltsangabe

Prologue
Chapter 1: Peering through the Eyepiece of Randomness
The hidden role of chance . . . when human beings can be outperformed by a
rat.
Chapter 2: The Laws of Truths and Half-Truths
The basic principles of probability and how they are abused . . . why a
good story is often less likely to be true than a flimsy explanation.
Chapter 3: Finding Your Way through a Space of Possibilities
A framework for thinking about random situations . . . from a gambler in
plague-ridden Italy to Let’s Make a Deal.
Chapter 4: Tracking the Pathways to Success
How to count the number of ways in which events can happen, and why it
matters . . . the mathematical meaning of expectation.
Chapter 5: The Dueling Laws of Large and Small Numbers
The extent to which probabilities are reflected in the results we observe .
. . Zeno’s paradox, the concept of limits, and beating the casino at
roulette.
Chapter 6: False Positives and Positive Fallacies
How to adjust expectations in light of past events or new knowledge . . .
mistakes in conditional probability from medical screening to the O. J.
Simpson trial and the prosecutor’s fallacy.
Chapter 7: Measurement and the Law of Errors
The meaning and lack of meaning in measurements . . . the bell curve and
wine ratings, political polls, grades, and the position of planets.
Chapter 8: The Order in Chaos
How large numbers can wash out the disorder of randomness . . . or why
200,000,000 drivers form a creature of habit.
Chapter 9: Illusions of Patterns and Patterns of Illusion
Why we are often fooled by the regularities in chance events . . . can a
million consecutive zeroes or the success of Wall Street gurus be random?
Chapter 10: The Drunkard’s Walk
Why chance is a more fundamental conception than causality . . . Bruce
Willis, Bill Gates, and the normal accident theory of life.
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index