Name: The Drunkard's Walk
ISBN: 9780307275172

The Drunkard's Walk

In this irreverent and illuminating book, acclaimed writer and scientist Leonard Mlodinow shows us how randomness, change, and probability reveal a tremendous amount about our daily lives, and how we misunderstand the significance of everything from a casual conversation to a major financial setback. As a result, successes and failures in life are often attributed to clear and obvious cases, when in actuality they are more profoundly influenced by chance.The rise and fall of your favorite movie star of the most reviled CEO--in fact, of all our destinies--reflects as much as planning and innate abilities. Even the legendary Roger Maris, who beat Babe Ruth's single-season home run record, was in all likelihood not great but just lucky. And it might be shocking to realize that you are twice as likely to be killed in a car accident on your way to buying a lottery ticket than you are to win the lottery.How could it have happened that a wine was given five out of five stars, the highest rating, in one journal and in another it was called the worst wine of the decade? Mlodinow vividly demonstrates how wine ratings, school grades, political polls, and many other things in daily life are less reliable than we believe. By showing us the true nature of change and revealing the psychological illusions that cause us to misjudge the world around us, Mlodinow gives fresh insight into what is really meaningful and how we can make decisions based on a deeper truth.

What Hacker News says

balder1991Sep 2025

I think the “secret explanation” can simply be things you don’t know (or that most people don’t know) because they’re not interesting per se, but when combined they make an interesting whole.

I enjoyed some books that don’t have anything unknown in its parts but that brought a lot of shift in perspectives for me, such as “Man’s Worldly Goods”[1] and “The Drunkard’s Walk”[2].

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Mans-Worldly-Goods-Wealth-Nations/dp/... [2] https://www.amazon.com/Drunkards-Walk-Randomness-Rules-Lives...

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dawnofduskJul 2025

Another take along similar lines can be found in the book The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives, by Leonard Mlodinow. Highly recommend.

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adenozineNov 2022

After the 2008 crash I was at a very low point in my personal life and I was even considering moving away from DC and maybe going away from gov sector work and contract work and trying to find a "regular" job, etc etc.

I read this book called The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow, and it opened my eyes about probability. I decided to get my MSc in Statistics and I reworked basically my whole midgame-endgame strategy for my life.

I look back so thankful for that book and for being in a position to just be at home during that time to read and ponder things. In particular, I remember some walks I went on with my wife and some conversations that I had anticipated being difficult about leaving or staying in DC, but it just all came together.

Recovering from the crash took time, but the purpose I found in pushing myself to get the degree done and to fight for my space here in govland was absolutely, positively instrumental.

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chucksmashSep 2022

Or perhaps it's not quite as binary as "either you believe success is all luck or you're arrogant."

There's a lovely book, "The Drunkard's Walk - How Randomness Rules Our Lives" that has a good take on this.

I don't have time to find the passage right now, but the idea is essentially this: even if you work in an endeavour where success is overwhelmingly driven by luck, success still requires: taking a chance to have the opportunity to become lucky, an open mind and preparation to recognize the good luck that has occurred, and the skill to exploit the opportunity that luckiness has brought.

One must make chances for luck to occur, and one must have a prepared mind to take advantage of luck when it does occur.

I wouldn't necessarily read the replier as saying they have succeeded and luck had nothing to do with it (i.e. the binary view).

The problem with a view point of "it's all luck," IMO is this will lead you down the path of learned helplessness and even if you do get lucky you won't be in a position to capitalize because if you thought it came down to a roll of the dice, why would you bother skilling up in the first place?

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mariodianaMay 2021

I read about this years ago in a very good book (for the layman) on the subject of probability: "The Drunkard's Walk." I highly recommend the book.

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SilasHaslamJun 2020

The Drunkard's Walk [0], by Leonard Mlodinow, covers this and related topics brilliantly.

Relevant excerpt: "..economists like W. Brian Arthur argue that a concurrence of minor factors can even lead companies with no particular edge to come to dominate their competitors. "In the real world," he wrote, "if several similar-sized firms entered a market together, small fortuitous events - unexpected orders, chance meetings with buyers, managerial whims - would help determine which ones received early sales and, over time, which came to dominate. Economic activity is... [determined] by individual transactions that are too small to foresee, and these small 'random' events could [ac]cumulate and become magnified by positive feedbacks over time."

[0] https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/907183439

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