Reddit Reddit reviews The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives

We found 31 Reddit comments about The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

Science & Math
Books
Behavioral Sciences
The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives
Vintage Books USA
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31 Reddit comments about The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives:

u/GrumpySimon · 15 pointsr/books

"Don't Sleep, there are snakes" by Dan Everett - it's a fascinating book about a linguist/missionary who went to work with a tribe of Piraha speakers in the Amazon. Loses his religion, and discovers a language that doesn't really fit into the orthodox view of linguistics and is causing a whole lot of debate.

The Drunkard's Walk - is a great book on how misconceptions of probability rule your life. It's a fun introduction to probability theory and has all sorts of WTF moments in it.

Edit: oh and possibly my favorite book I've read all year is David Attenborough's autobiography A life on air - it's full of all sorts of amazing, hilarious, and insightful anecdotes of Attenborough's 40-odd years of making nature documentaries, and contains lots of interesting info about the state-of-the art in TV making over time (e.g. "we could only run that type of camera for 20 seconds, or it would overheat and catch fire"). Great stuff.

u/oleitas · 10 pointsr/booksuggestions

I'd recommend A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson. This book is great because it covers so many of the most scientifically important events throughout history, rather than just being a layman's introduction to a specific branch of science.

If you're at all interested in statistics and how misleading they can be, check out The Drunkard's Walk.

u/MuffinMopper · 5 pointsr/IAmA

I read this novel about statistics and found it really digestible and interesting. If you read it you will basically understand how a normal distribution works, which makes you more knowledgeable about stats than 95% of the world.

https://www.amazon.com/Drunkards-Walk-Randomness-Rules-Lives/dp/0307275175

Also this book is probably the most famous "pop stats" book ever written. People reference the book and its author all the time in basically every quantitative field.

https://www.amazon.com/Visual-Display-Quantitative-Information/dp/1930824130

u/RidiculousIncarnate · 4 pointsr/technology

Read The Drunkards Walk. Sounds like it might be up your alley. As I recall, although its been quite a while, it has some interesting analysis of how the way we perceive how and why things happen in business or other areas of our lives.

Like movie execs who would get brought in to revitalize the studio, they would green-light a bunch of projects that would get added to the production pipeline and then a year or two later they would be removed from their position because the situation of the studio hadn't changed. Only then a year later the movies they had put into production would get released, like Titanic, make a billion dollars and they would get no credit for being the ones who chose to make that movie as someone else already has their job.

Fascinating read.

u/pixel_fcker · 3 pointsr/TrueReddit

If you're interested in statistics as it relates to many aspects of our lives--including the law--in often unintuitive ways, I highly recommend reading "The Drunkard's Walk" http://www.amazon.com/The-Drunkards-Walk-Randomness-Rules/dp/0307275175/

u/UngluedChalice · 2 pointsr/news

If you multiply the probability of winning times the payoff, you find that each entry, assuming you wouldn't have to share it and you get the full $400 million, is worth $1.74. Since it costs $2 to play and there are other things that reduce the winning amount, it is not a good bet.

Source: page 77 of this book.

In 1992 the Virginia Lottery had a game in which the value of the ticket was a little over $3, but they charged $1 per ticket. So investors got together and bought a lot of tickets, and won doing it.

u/[deleted] · 2 pointsr/DotA2

meh, confidence is good for your play as well, so take it all in stride. can't play at the level you need to if you don't think you have the ability to do so and set high expectations

just don't forget that you're not special to matchmaking, you're just an mmr value, same as everyone else. that mmr value gets sorted into games, and if you are deserving of vastly more mmr, you'll find those games easy. it's extremely common to make big conclusions from misleading, selective or anecdotal data.

it's not specific to DotA, though:

http://www.amazon.ca/The-Drunkards-Walk-Randomness-Rules/dp/0307275175

leads to dunning kruger perceptions of skill.

u/BoneByter · 2 pointsr/financialindependence

Acceptance.

There is no guarantee of success in anything. If in the end you failed, accept it.

That said, there's a good argument for taking many smaller risks rather than a few big risks to mitigate the luck factor. The more attempts you make the more likely it is for your luck to balance out (regress towards the mean).

It's unlikely that your life story falls on either end of the bell curve.

u/identicalParticle · 2 pointsr/Fitness

I have another possible explanation for bad days at the gym, as well as good days. They can be eplained by NOTHING. They are simply the result of random chance.

In The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, the author explains this issue, and how misunderstanding it can lead to bad behavior, for training in particular.

A bad day (or a good day) is a rare event. Two bad days in a row is a very rare event. It's quite likely you'll do better during your next practice for no reason at all. And for many people, they'll incorrectly attribute this improvement to something that they did.

In training, it's well knows that rewarding people for doing well is more effective than punishing people for doing poorly. But when trainers see their students have a bad day, and they yell at them, they see improvement the next day! "Swearing at my students causes them to improve." Similarly when a student has a very good day, and the trainer compliments them, they see them getting worse the next day. "Complimenting my students makes them get worse!"

People can end up making a lot of bad decisions by not accounting for the effects of random chance. I'm not saying that's the case here, it's just something to keep in mind when you're evaluating your own performance.

u/Undecided_fellow · 2 pointsr/AskStatistics

I'm a big fan of The Drunkard's Walk. Also, the author Leonard Mlodinow (PhD in physics from Berkeley) has a number of other really good books on different scientific fields.

u/Morophin3 · 1 pointr/answers

Here are some cool videos for you(not really informative about the makeup of cells but nonetheless might interest you enough to read the amazing books that I've listed below! The microcosmos really is a whole 'nother world!):

Kinesin Walking Narrated Version:

http://youtu.be/YAva4g3Pk6k


This is a better model. Notice how the 'legs' shake around violently until it snaps into place. Sometimes the random motion of the jiggling atoms(these aren't shown. Imagine the Kinesin molecules shown in a sea of water molecules, all jiggling about ferociously. The 'invisible' water molecules are bumping up against the Kinesin, and it's evolved to work with the random motions) makes it step backwards! But the ATP/ADP process makes it more likely to step forward than backwards(an evolved process). This is explained well in the book Life's Ratchet below.

Molecular Motor Kinesin Walks Like a Drunk Man:

http://youtu.be/JckOUrl3aes

Here are some amazing book to read. Seriously read all of these, preferably in the order listed to get the best understanding. They will blow your mind many times over. Many, if not all, may be at your local library.


QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0691125759


Quarks: The Stuff of Matter

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0465067816


Thermodynamics:A Very Short Introduction

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0199572194


Life's Ratchet:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0465022537/


The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1416594795


The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0307275175p

I would also recommend taking a biology and maybe a chemistry class at your local community college, if possible. My biology class started with the smallest stuff, atoms(technically not the smallest, but whatever), and worked its way up through the chain of sizes up to the biosphere. It was very informative and there were a few people in their 40s(a guess) that really enjoyed the class. So you can do it, too!

u/ZeroBugBounce · 1 pointr/AskReddit

Yeah, I didn't understand that point really correctly until I read The Drunkard's Walk. People vastly underestimate the role of randomness in how things are.

u/agconway · 1 pointr/math

Mathematical Tourist by Ivars Peterson is an entertaining book for math audiences of all levels. Light on depth but lots of breadth into modern math problems.

The Drunkard's Walk by Leonard Mlodinow is a great historical account of the development of probability theory and statistics with lots of interesting examples.

u/MooseMalloy · 1 pointr/askscience

For further information, the book The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow contains a number of good examples of how humans have difficulties recognizing true randomness. For example, iTunes had to make the random play function less random in order to appear more random.

u/chopthis · 1 pointr/poker

The better question to ask is why do you need this in the first place? If you were playing good and running good your mental game would be fine. The only thing that affecting poker player results are playing bad or running bad. Playing bad can be fixed by analyzing hands, reading good poker books and training. The effects of running bad can be lessened by understanding probability and randomness better. Running bad shouldn't really be an issue if you are bank rolled properly because if it is, then you are playing bad.

Most poker players that I know that are always frustrated or constantly tilting are almost always playing at stakes their bankroll doesn't support.
If you are using the 100 times big blind and 25 buyins recommendation, you shouldn't really have a mental game issue because you should be able to absorb the variance.

Mental Game Books

  • The Mental Game of Poker

  • The Poker Mindset

    More understanding about probability, randomness and focusing on the present can be helpful. If you understand those more it should help your mental game. I would recommend these books and at least understand their central points:

  • The Power of Now - relates to poker because the hand you are playing now is the only hand you should worry about. There is no last hand. Each hand is a clean slate. Focus on the present hand.

  • The Drunkard's Walk - relates to poker because whether you double up and lost two buy-ins could just be randomness.

  • The 80 / 20 Principle - relates to poker because 80% of your wins or losses will most likely come from 20% of hands played. Thus making hand selection important.

  • The Black Swan - one "black swan" situation could triple you up or make you lose your whole stack. Typically this means knowing when to fold big hands like AA or KK.

  • Fooled By Randomness - relates to poker because you could win the main event and millions of dollars and still not be a good poker player. The poker gods and luck could have just wanted to hang out with you for a week.




u/DrunkMc · 1 pointr/truegaming

They refer to this in The Drunkard' Walk, but with pilots. (https://www.amazon.com/Drunkards-Walk-Randomness-Rules-Lives/dp/0307275175)

We essentially have a skill level, but there are so many variables that some days you'll perform worse, some days you'll perform better. But overall, you'll tend to be closer to your normal skill level.

u/Beast_Ice · 1 pointr/todayilearned

read the drunkards walk and you understand why this is so.

u/BurkeTheYounger · 1 pointr/pics

?? Then read some statistics. Even if 100% of these anecdotes was made up, what do you think of this article?

http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-black-americans-commit-crime/19439

You can debate cause, but there is data on this issue. If you think it's racist to keep track of the data, IMO you're part of the problem.

From the article:

>Judging from online comments, there is a wide spectrum of views on this, from unapologetic racism to militant refusal to blame the problem on anything but historic white racism.

IMO all the people described in that sentence are the problem. Shitty behaviour is shitty behaviour, and even if it's not always going to give you accurate conclusions if you treat anecdotes as data, it's pretty hard to ignore your lived experiences.

See: Drunkard's Walk if you want to see how often we do this.

http://www.amazon.ca/The-Drunkards-Walk-Randomness-Rules/dp/0307275175

u/mariox19 · 1 pointr/IAmA
u/jebuz23 · 1 pointr/actuary

Superforecasting has been on my "get to soon" list since I got it last Christmas. It just got a nice nod in the latest CAS magazine.

Along the probability/math lines, other books I've enjoyed are:

u/uhhhgoogy · 1 pointr/TagProIRL

The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives

I read this 5 or 6 years ago and really enjoyed it. Has a lot of math, but includes a lot of history and some psychology as well.

From the Amazon page:

"By showing us the true nature of chance and revealing the psychological illusions that cause us to misjudge the world around us, Mlodinow gives us the tools we need to make more informed decisions. From the classroom to the courtroom and from financial markets to supermarkets, Mlodinow's intriguing and illuminating look at how randomness, chance, and probability affect our daily lives will intrigue, awe, and inspire."

u/RampanTThirteen · 1 pointr/hiphopheads

The Drunkard's Walk was a pretty interesting read about how randomness and our poor psychological understanding of it affects so many things. Its in the same sort of genre as a Freakonomics or Blink type thing I'd say.

u/krybop · 1 pointr/explainlikeimfive

Leonard Mlidinow in A Drunkards Walk makes an extremely compelling argument for why a CEO has no actual effect on a company's growth/success. And that judging a CEO on how successful the company is a lot like judgings a person for being able to predict a the next roll of a die will be a 6.

u/beroe · 1 pointr/booksuggestions
  • The Canon by Natalie Angier.

    This is a fast-paced, beautifully written, introduction to the sciences- there's a chapter each devoted to scientific theory, probability, measurement, physics, chemistry, evolutionary and molecular biology, geology, and astronomy. It's written entirely for laymen in an engaging way, and from 2007, so the information is quite current.

    For instance, from the evolutionary bio chapter:
    > Evolution is neither organized nor farsighted, and you wouldn't want to put it in charge of planning your company's annual board meeting, or even your kid's birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. As biologists like to point out, evolution is a tinkerer, an ad-hocker, and a jury-rigger. It works with what it has on hand, not with what it has in mind. Some of its inventions prove elegant, while in others you can see the seams and dried glue.

  • I don't have The Drunkard's Walk by Leonard Mlodinow in front of me, but it's a good introduction to probability, with a bunch of real-world examples, and also good explanations of the theory. It changed the way I think about statistics.
u/wrtChase · 1 pointr/politics

I recommend reading this book https://www.amazon.com/Drunkards-Walk-Randomness-Rules-Lives/dp/0307275175

You're taking two observations and strongly correlating them, without actual evidence.

u/maredsous10 · 0 pointsr/audiobooks

Almost anything Malcom Gladwell.

Disappearing Spoon
http://www.amazon.com/The-Disappearing-Spoon-Periodic-Elements/dp/B00401LQ2Q/ref=tmm_aud_title_0

Feynman's Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life
http://www.amazon.com/Feynmans-Rainbow-Search-Beauty-Physics/dp/044653045X

Euclid's Window : The Story of Geometry from Parallel Lines to Hyperspace

http://www.amazon.com/Euclids-Window-Geometry-Parallel-Hyperspace/dp/0684865246/ref=la_B001IGP3W0_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1342497797&sr=1-7

The Drunkards Walk : How Randomness Rules Our Lives
http://www.amazon.com/The-Drunkards-Walk-Randomness-Rules/dp/0307275175/ref=la_B001IGP3W0_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1342497797&sr=1-3

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