This book is a historical stroll through the development of statistics and our understanding of stochastic (unpredictable, random, non-deterministic) processes from the quantum mechanics of atoms to the unpredictability in meteorology. The author most recently collaborated with Stephen Hawking in the curiously-titled "The Grand Design" and writes in colorful and bright prose.

The book is a nice complement to both Predictably Irrational and Fooled by Randomness in that, in addition to explaining the scientific history of probability in physics/economics, The Drunkard's Walk also illustrates our natural counter-intuitive make-up to project meaning and patterns onto essentially random phenomena. In the process, however, he also presents us with a theory of chaos that is not totally arbitrary but that is predictably unpredictable. For example, I'm still trying to understand how Benford's law, which states that the first number in a sequence of numbers in nature appear with lower probability the higher the number goes so that 1 appears 30% of the time while 9 presents much less frequently than by chance. This law has been used to show election fraud in Iran and Minnesota (http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/0...). This is interesting for me since after millennia of scientific investigation we are only now beginning to see the beauty of mathematics as a tool to describe the fundamental nature of reality (e.g., fractals, etc.).

There's also a bit in there about business and success which is interesting as well. My favorite quote from the book was taken from IBM pioneer Thomas Watson who said: "To have success you must increase your failure rate." Truer words were never spoken to a graduate student in the sciences.