Ruth Francis, Nature’s Head of Press, is reviewing all the entries shortlisted for the Royal Society’s science book prize. She’ll be reading one per week and we are posting her thoughts on The Great Beyond every Friday between now and the prize ceremony on 15 September.
The Drunkard’s Walk – How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow
Much of what happens in life is a result of random factors. Talent and persistence may be factors in success, but many more ingredients are involved. So begins Leonard Mlodinow’s exhilarating ramble through probability, randomness and uncertainty.
The book is broken into ten bite-sized chapters, each on a single topic split into digestible examples. These take us from an overview of randomness to more developed discussions of chance and causality, via truths and half-truths, the laws of large and small numbers, measurement, and statistics.
Along the way it is not theory alone that is depicted; Mlodinow beautifully illustrates both the history of theories and the theorists themselves.
Of one minor mathematician we learn he had his own son tossed out of the Swiss Academie of Sciences by plagiarizing the boy’s book and faking the publication date so that his own text appeared to have been published first. Perhaps unsurprisingly this charmer “has been variously described in historical texts as jealous, vain, thin-skinned, stubborn, bilious, boastful, dishonest and a consummate liar”.
Stories may be first and foremost, but in Mlodinow’s hands they are a tool rather than a stumbling block, intertwined with the numbers in order to elucidate his points. Often we flick from tale to theory, delaying the gratification of a more complete answer to the question posed, or the satisfaction of hearing the end of a story – but this serves to draw the reader on to the reveal.
Mlodinow reminds us that lots of great and popular books were rejected by publishers multiple times before going on to become bestsellers and the final pages of his own treatise neatly return to the opening idea of the randomness of success.
We are not told if or how many times The Drunkard’s Walk was rejected. But if that was the case I am glad that he persisted and that chance favoured him, for he certainly has talent in abundance.