The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives | Leonard Mlodinow | Talks at Google

Professor Leonard Mlodinow visits Google's Mountain View, CA headquarters to discuss his book, "The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives". This event took place on May 22, 2008, as part of the Authors@Google series. For more information about Prof. Mlodinow, please visit http://www.its.caltech.edu/~len/

In The Drunkard's Walk, acclaimed writer and scientist Leonard Mlodinow shows us how randomness, change, and probability reveal a tremendous amount about our daily lives, and how we misunderstand the significance of everything from a casual conversation to a major financial setback. As a result, successes and failures in life are often attributed to clear and obvious cases, when in actuality they are more profoundly influenced by chance.

Leonard Mlodinow received his doctorate in physics from the University of California, Berkeley, was an Alexander von Humboldt fellow at the Max Planck Institute, and now teaches about randomness to future scientists at Caltech. Along the way he also wrote for the television series MacGyver and Star Trek: The Next Generation. His previous books include Euclid's Window: The Story of Geometry from Parallel Lines to Hyperspace, Feynman's Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life, and, with Stephen Hawking, A Briefer History of Time. He lives in South Pasadena, California.