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Zusatztext “Mlodinow writes in a breezy style! interspersing probabilistic mind-benders with portraits of theorists.... The result is a readable crash course in randomness.” — The New York Times Book Review “A wonderfully readable guide to how the mathematical laws of randomness affect our lives.” —Stephen Hawking! author of A Brief History of Time "[Mlodinow] thinks in equations but explains in anecdote! simile! and occasional bursts of neon. . . . The results are mind-bending." — Fortune "Even if you begin The Drunkard's Walk as a skeptic! by the time you reach the final pages! you will gain an understanding-if not acceptance-of the intuitively improbable ways that probability biases the outcomes of life's uncertainties." — Barron's “Delightfully entertaining.” — Scientific American “A magnificent exploration of the role that chance plays in our lives. The probability is high that you will be entertained and enlightened by this intelligent charmer.” —Daniel Gilbert! author of Stumbling on Happiness “Mlodinow is the perfect guy to reveal the ways unrelated elements can relate and connect.” — The Miami Herald “A primer on the science of probability.” — The Washington Post Book World “Challenges our intuitions about probability and explores how! by understanding randomness! we can better grasp our world.” — Seed Magazine “Mlodinow has an intimate perspective on randomness.” — The Austin Chronicle Informationen zum Autor Leonard Mlodinow Klappentext With the born storyteller's command of narrative and imaginative approach, Leonard Mlodinow vividly demonstrates how our lives are profoundly informed by chance and randomness and how everything from wine ratings and corporate success to school grades and political polls are less reliable than we believe. 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. Leseprobe Peering through the Eyepiece of Randomness I remember, as a teenager, watching the yellow flame of the Sabbath candles dancing randomly above the white paraffin cylinders that fueled them. I was too young to think candlelight romantic, but still I found it magical-because of the flickering images created by the fire. They shifted and morphed, grew and waned, all without apparent cause or plan. Surely, I believed, there must be rhyme and reason underlying the flame, some pattern that scientists could predict and explain with their mathematical equations. "Life isn't like that," my father told me. "Sometimes things happen that cannot be foreseen." He told me of the time when, in Buchenwald, the Nazi concentration camp in which he was imprisoned and starving, he stole a loaf of bread from the bakery. The baker had the Gestapo gather everyone who might have committed the crime and line the suspects up. "Who stole the bread?" the baker asked. When no one answered, he told the guards to shoot the suspects one by one until either they were all dead or someone confessed. My father stepped forward to spare the others. He did not try to paint himself in a heroic light but told me that he did it because he expected to be shot either way. Instead of having him killed, though, the baker gave my father a plum job, as his assistant. "A chance event," my father said. "It had nothing to do with you, but had it happened diffe...
