Drunken walk Essay Example

Drunken walk Essay Example Drunken walk Paper Drunken walk Paper â€Å"The Drunkards Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives† by Leonard Mlodinow was appreciated as one of the best book in 2009. People say this book can change the way of thinking and looking at things forever. The main idea of the book is the significance of the chance and its influence on the life. The author gives his reader the fresh insight on the political votes, different ratings, the rises and falls of celebrities, and related this with the common things in the life, from the morning conversation to the financial setback. The book could be even considered as scholar source but the brilliant writing style and the sparkling humor made it the bestseller. â€Å"The Drunkard Walk† Generally, the idea of Mlodinow isn’t new: the author proves it citing the book of the 16th century author Gerolamo Cardano. The book â€Å"Book on Games of Chance† describes the importance of Fortune, and Mlodinow just develops the idea. Probably the most valuable feature of this book is the feeling of control that the reader can obtain after finishing reading. The experiments proved that the person, who is in control on his or her environment, can live longer – even if the control is less that this person thinks. However, the author warns his reader from overestimation of the control. He describes the story of a Paramount studio executive, Sherry Lansing. She was the head of the studio in the times of its successful blockbusters, like â€Å"Titanic† and â€Å"Forrest Gump†. Suddenly the streak of a good luck finished, the studio released some unsuccessful movies and Sherry Lansing was fired. After her discharge Paramount had the best summer in a decade. From the cause-effect relationship point of view the relation is obvious: Lansing was discharged, the success retuned to Paramount, ergo, her discharge was justified. However, the author remains us that the movie production is rather long process, and the most successful films like â€Å"War of the Worlds† and â€Å"The Longest Yard† were already in production in the moment of Lansing discharge. Thus, Lansing was sure she controlled the situation, and her management was sure she was the reason of slowdown. The story proves they both were mistaken. Mlodonow warns his reader against the hasty conclusions, especially based on the â€Å"statistics†. The problem is people usually undervalue the importance of the perception. â€Å"†¦in all aspects of our lives we encounter streaks and other peculiar patterns of success and failure. Sometimes success predominates, sometimes failure. Either way it is important in our own lives to take the long view and understand that streaks and other patterns that don’t appear random can indeed happen by pure chance. It is also important, when assessing others, to recognize that among a large group of people it would be very odd if one of them didn’t experience a long streak of successes or failures. (Mlodinow, 2009)† Our perception have the impact on our decisions, and â€Å"human perception, Faraday recognized, is not a direct consequence of reality but rather an act of imagination. (Mlodonow, 2009)† Besides, Mlodinow explains the laws of math statistics, making his reader understand that 50-50 probability is almost the pure abstraction, which doesn’t exist in reality due to randomness. However, his conclusions are rather optimistic. It is impossible to predict the outcome of a single coin toss or a given trade, but it us real to describe the results of a series using the laws of statistics and probability. Conclusion The book of Mlodinow is a mix of author’s opinion about the randomness and the historical narratives on statistics. The author concludes that though the randomness is everywhere, it is almost impossible to manage it. The only way to manage the randomness is to create it, but it also doesn’t guarantee the success. However, the understanding of basic math statistics laws together with the feeling of confidence makes the book worth reading. References Mlodinow, L. (2009) â€Å"The Drunkards Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives†. Vintage Books. ISBN: 0307275175.