Robert’s Ramblings

Leonard Mlodinow’s new book, “The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives” is hard to categorize. It is a scientific book that describes and explains many of the ways that mathematics affects the human condition. It is also a motivational book because it encourages the reader not to allow negative events to shape their world view. You could even call it a business book since it can inspire a reader to succeed and even encourages behavior that does lead to business success.

One thing can be conclusively said about the book; it is brilliant. It shows that a brilliant person can mix good writing, historical context, scientific fact and inspirational advice in one very readable text. Mr. Mlodinow is not a novice at the enterprise of writing. He has written books with Stephen Hawkings (“A Briefer History of Time”) and has written books about Feynman and Euclid–both notable scientist in different fields.

The Drunkard’s Walkeffectively discusses the hidden role of chance in everyday situations. It also discusses the history of the study of probability and the stories of the people that moved it forward. Some of the names are well known and others not at all. I was personally amused by the story of Gerolamo Cardano who was born by accident and who was so frail that no one believed he would survive. He faced the Black Death plague and though his nurse and brothers died, he survived with some facial disfigurements. Against his father’s wishes he decided to study medicine. He had to support himself and chose to so with games of chance. This decision led to his writing, “Book on Games of Chance” which Mlodinow says covers card games, dice, backgammon and astragali. According to him, this book represented a beachhead on “the human quest to understand the nature of uncertainty.” Without repeating all of Cardano’s accomplishments or the significance of these here, I can tell you that the most amusing part of the story is that Cardano did not want his book published lest his competition in games of chance learn his many secrets.

Mlodinow teaches you probability and statistics and many other scientific facts and theories through stories that present a human dimension to the facts. It is this that makes the book fun to read and easy to recommend. What made the book extremely worthwhile to me as someone who runs a small business is a quote from the last chapter in the book: “What I’ve learned, above all, is to keep marching forward because the best news is that since chance does play a role, one important factor to success is under our control: the number of at bats, the number of chances taken, the number of opportunities seized. For even a coin weighted toward failure will sometimes land on success.”

You can get your copy at Amazonor other book stores everywhere.

Robert Alonso
Alonso Consulting, Inc.