April's Book of the Month

This month we are reading Leonard Mlodinow's The Drunkard's Walk: How randomness rules our lives.

The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives

From the New York Times book review: "Mlodinow — the author of “Feynman’s Rainbow,” “Euclid’s Window” and, with Stephen Hawking, “A Briefer History of Time” — writes in a breezy style, interspersing probabilistic mind-benders with portraits of theorists like Jakob Bernoulli, Blaise Pascal, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Pierre-Simon de Laplace and Thomas Bayes. The result is a readable crash course in randomness and statistics that includes the clearest explanation I’ve encountered of the Monty Hall problem (named for the M.C. of the old TV game show “Let’s Make a Deal”)."

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Comment by John Karabaic on April 29, 2009 at 9:10pm

DrKiki, can you ask the author about the book on entropy mentioned in the acknowledgements? Will it ever get written? Might be an interesting "sequel".

Comment by John Karabaic on April 29, 2009 at 8:37pm

The last chapter is reminding me of this, the best textbook opening I ever read:

"Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics.

"Perhaps it would be wise to approach the subject cautiously."

-- David L. Goodstein, States of Matter

Comment by John Karabaic on April 29, 2009 at 1:54pm

Daniel, I'm sorry to hear that! I'm really enjoying the book, particularly in contrast to "Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk" by Bernstein. What Bernstein clouds, Mlodinow makes clear. Best book on this topic since my beloved 6.041 text, "Fundamentals of Probability Theory" by the late, great Alvin Drake.

Comment by Daniel on April 27, 2009 at 1:45pm

Sorry, I gave up on The Drunkard's Walk. Not my favorite. The printing errors didn't help! I even got the bookstore to give me a full refund as all their copies were misprinted.

Comment by Kirsten Sanford on April 27, 2009 at 1:07pm

We'll be interviewing Leonard Mlodinow on TWIS next Monday, May 5th!

I'm also hoping to get a bookclub chat scheduled for either this or next Friday afternoon. I'll keep you posted!

Comment by PaulaT on April 24, 2009 at 2:48pm

Hey, that's not a bad idea, would love to contribute to TWIS! I listen to the show on podcast, usually a day or two later, not live, but I will definitely make a donation this week. Especially since Kirsten is interviewing my hero next week! (Michio Kaku)

Paula T.

Comment by John Karabaic on April 24, 2009 at 12:43pm

I'd also be OK if you did an Amazon partner link on the books with the money going to kdvs or twis or whatever....

Comment by Bill Burris on April 23, 2009 at 7:49pm

I also like the ideas of knowing the next 3 books ahead of time. I like to order enough at one time to get free shipping.

Comment by Kirsten Sanford on April 23, 2009 at 6:58pm

Great idea, Paula! I've been thinking along those lines as well.

Comment by PaulaT on April 22, 2009 at 4:20pm

I like the idea of having the next two (or even three) books lined up to give people more time to order or get from the library.

Paula T.

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