Monday, May 17, 2010

The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives


The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives
by Leonard Mlodinow [Compact Disc 519.2 Mlo]

Our brains want to see patterns and order. That is not the way life works. Physicist Leonard Mlodinow explores the ways random events shape the world and how human intuition fights that fact. Mlodinow uses the Let's Make a Deal game show, Las Vegas roulette tables, Bruce Willis' career and the Warsaw ghetto after Hitler invaded Poland to illustrate his points. Mlodinow's entertaining and informative way of presenting the material makes this book-on-CD fun to listen to. His down-to-earth style makes it easy for the mathematically challenged such as myself to grasp his concepts. But his explanations are still sophisticated enough to keep the mathematically inclined, such as my husband, interested. [If you like this, you may also wish to try Simplexity: Why Simples Things Become Complex by Jeffrey Kluger, Sway: The Irresistable Pull of Irrational Behavior by Ori Brafman, and Coincidences, Chaos and all That Math Jazz by Edward Burger.] -- recommended by Donna G. - Virtual Services Department

[Also available in print format.]

[ official Leonard Mlodinow at Caltech web page ]

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