While I would be lying if I said that every aspect of this book is interesting it was a good read and it will definitely have you questioning how you think afterwards.
informative reflective medium-paced
challenging informative mysterious reflective medium-paced

Maybe interesting for those who do not have a scientific education, but for the others it is a quite dull and scattered 101 about statistics, probability and heuristics. Also the author likes biographies a tad too much and continuously jumps from them to the explanation of the person's contributions to science and back.
challenging informative reflective slow-paced
challenging funny informative reflective medium-paced

I first came across this book while perusing the math section at my local Border's bookstore. The title interested me because when I was a student in college, the professor who taught my probability class was an expert in the drunkard's walk.

Mlodinow's book is an examination into two fields: one being the history of probability and statistics (and the difference between the two), the other being the flaws in our thinking that can arise from randomness. Mlodinow covers quite a bit of ground in this books, with topics ranging from the Monty Hall Paradox, to the life and history of Blaise Pascal, to normal distribution. The math-averse need no fear, as Mlodinow goes to great pains not to inundate the reader with endless equations and proofs (in fact, I don't think there was a single equation in the whole book!).

I really enjoyed reading The Drunkard's Walk, as I've always been fascinated by the biographies of the great mathematicians and scientists of history. In addition, many of the points that were made in this book echo the points that Malcolm Gladwell made in his book Outliers, which is also another one of my favorites. However, while I do appreciate Mlodinow's attempts to avoid the formal mathematical details, it makes following and understanding some topics difficult (most notably the section on Bayes' Theorem).

If you're already well-versed in probability/statistics, you'll probably find this book lacking in 'meat', but even still, I think just about everyone can get something useful out of reading The Drunkard's Walk.

A charming book. Witty, fast moving and playful entry into basic themes in probability.
challenging funny informative reflective medium-paced

"Drunkard's Walk" reminded me a bit of "Chances Are" by Kaplan and Kaplan which I read a couple of years ago, but I think I like TDW better. If you're a fan of popular critical thinking books along the lines of Michael Shermer's works or the "isn't that interesting" economical analysis books like "Freakanomics", then TDW will work for you as well. There wasn't much new for me in the first 100 pages or so (Monty Hall problem sort of stuff), but the second half of the book was worth the wait. Nothing fantastic, but a good reminder that we are not in control as much as we'd like to think.