The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives

by Leonard Mlodinow

the first step is to realize that success or failure sometimes arises neither from great skill nor from great incompetence but from, as the economist Armen Alchian wrote, “fortuitous circumstances.

the data we encounter in business, law, medicine, sports, the media, or your child’s third-grade report card can be read in many ways.

Human perception, Faraday recognized, is not a direct consequence of reality but rathert an act of imagination.6

What I’ve learned, above all, is to keep marching forward because the best news is that since chance does play a role, one important factor in success is under our control: the number of at bats, the number of chances taken, the number of opportunities seized. For even a coin weighted toward failure will sometimes land on success. Or as the IBM pioneer Thomas Watson said, “If you want to succeed, double your failure rate.”