The Drunkard's Walk How Randomness Rules our Lives

The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules our Lives
Leonard Mlodinow
Published by Vintage Books, division of Random House Inc., New York, USA in 2008
ISBN. 978-0-307-27517-2
252 Pages.

This book is from my daughter's collection of books. We have similar reading interests - rather random actually! The book caught my eye because it talks about randomness and how events that are random affect our lives. I love the imagery in the introduction which talks about random events being like molecules moving through time and space and how they may accidentally bump into or otherwise affect each other. I see life events as being like that and these "encounters" affect how our life flows.

The first chapter introduces us to concepts of dealing with randomness and the resultant tendency of success or failure as determined by random events. Mostly he talks about successful films and film studios. The idea that J K Rowling was refused six times for her initial book on Harry Potter is hard to imagine given the eventual success of both her novels and the subsequent films. It is persistent rather than randomness that determines success the author mentions and I need to read the rest of the book now to determine if I agree with his thesis.

My own life events that led me to genealogy are one such set of random events. We, my eldest daughter and I, went to Rome for eight days in November 2001 (yes it was an interesting time to fly to Europe and be there in the days following 9/11). This was an organized visit in that we were to attend a specific religious event the invitation for which I obtained via the Anglican newslist to which I belonged. The time we spent in Rome was absolutely wonderful and I appreciate it even more now that we have had our whirlwind tour of Europe where our time in Rome (2 days) was great but can not compare to spending eight days there even with the organized tours that swept us past long lineups. But it was here that for the first time I had a concrete thought about my ancestors and what they might or might not have done in the past. As I stood in front of St Peter's Basilica for the first time I wondered, aloud, whether any of my ancestors had made this pilgrimage to Rome (for that is how I saw it). Later as we traveled to the second city of our European trip (London) I experienced even more profound thoughts on fammily and front that experience (although it took another two years) was borne the desire to learn more about my ancestors. The randomness by which I reached the project that now occupies most of my waking hours (and sometimes my sleeping ones) has constantly amazed me and so this book has entered into my realm of thoughts. The randomness of life events bounces us one way or another like molecules in nature.

Continuing into Chapters Two, Three and Four the author carries us forward with his thesis on randomness and how it rules our lives. Comments that I found particularly interesting:

Probability wasn't particularly interesting up to the 1500s because one felt that their life was predetermined by the Gods initially (God in the case of the Jews and Gods in the case of Romans and Greeks) so that looking at the probability of a life event was not meaningful since all life events were predetermined.

Then the idea of events in a space that one could then determine the chances of a particular event occurring was first discussed by Gerolamo Cardano in his book "Games of Chance" which from the viewpoint of accuracy fails that test somewhat but does represent the first documentation of probability or the nature of uncertainty. His book was actually published after his death and the discussion of his life is quite interesting and will leave that to other readers to discover.

Enter Pascal in Chapter four and the development of Pascal's triangle which we still use today to look at the number of choices one can have for a particular case study. I found it quite fascinating that the details of Pascal's life story eventually lead him to make a decision on the existence of God and how he should lead his life with respect to God's existence. Again the reader should not have his/her reading spoiled by my book report and so I leave the details to the reader.

Now that I am nearly half way through the book, I look once again at Genealogy and how it occupies my life - basically all my waking hours are mostly directed towards achieving the maximum number of details possible on my ancestors. Not so much that I may solve all the riddles but that I leave the material thus found in such a fashion that another family researcher can pick my material up and run with it. Solving one's past opens one's eyes to the future in a way that I had not realized before in my life. Not that one can avoid the problems of life; that is highly unlikely but one can see that there is always a light at the end of the tunnel. An old philosophy always says that when God closes the door He opens a window so that one does escape but the escape may not always be viewed as success by those who view it. It is an interesting conundrum - what one person may view as failure another may see as great success.

Chapters six and seven discuss error and how error was derived. For every measurement there is an error factor whether caused by the machine used to perform the measurement or your own eyes which may not regard the particular measurement line at the same angle. Error exists in all that we do although we constantly strive to minimize that error. Bell curves now enter into the discussion and having written this absolutely difficult physics examination in Grade 13 in Ontario back in 1963 which few could possibly have passed, I can appreciate that a bell curve is the best means by which one might judge the fairness of an examination since you have so many people writing it from so many different areas with so many different teachers. Mind you I prefer the idea of standardized testing across a given area (province sounds reasonable) and that it might count for 100% as it allows for a student to really show their abilities. It may also be the downfall of a student who doesn't test well that is for sure but the alternative in my day was to send the student elsewhere to attend university (not always practical). But I dither once again and return to Bell Curves which should have absolutely nothing to do with genealogy or do they? Well yes they do; as I transcribe fromn these old registers I attempt to be consistent in how I read the letters but there is one difficulty in that people were not always consisent in how they fornmed those letters I am so carefully trying to read and so there is an error term. I attempt to minimize that error term by reviewing the page to see if there are other letters formed like that and by referring to the entire word and the probability it is one item or another - like Smith or Jones (easily told apart) but how about Smith and Spratt when letters are smudged or missing over time. Well it is an interesting time and I find that I quite enjoy it in spite of the propensity for error. I know that once I publish these files that others will go in and have a look and possibly write mne and say I do not agree. I welcome such comments as it can only make the work better.

I am now moving to the last couple of chapters of the book and I can say this has been a most fascinating read. I had forgotten Lavoisier (father of Chemistry) was beheaded by the French revolutionists. What more would he have accomplished in his lifetime - what a loss!

Chaptter 8 amazingly has some application to genealogy in that the statistical measurement of "human events" now enters into the field of randomness ruling our lives. A chart created by John Gaunt looking at the mortality statistics which the English kept for London from the 1600s on has a table on the mortality of 100 people who by the age of 6 would number 74, by the age of 16 would be 40, by the age of 26 would be 25, by the age of 36 would be 16, by the age of 46 would be 10, by the age of 56 would be 6, by the age of 66 would be 3, by the age of 76 would be 1 with no one living after that time. This is of course an average as some lived longer and some shorter. These are the life tables that were then used by insurance companies and the World Health Organization amazingly. In 1667 the French began to keep such information on their citizens - particularly the effect of the plague on their populations.

Chapter 9 discusses personal biais and how it influences how we perceive items in our daily life. It is something that I have been very way of doing genealogy. A lot of information on some of my lines has been published and in many cases the original data was flawed. I wonder, to myself, why do people repeat this flawed data but then initially I too saw the data as published but eventually resolved that I could find no proof or the data was actually incorrect and I have removed it from my tree. Why do other people cling to the published results that have been proven to be erroneous in published literature? Again the author captures this reason. People inherently will follow what has been done and accept it rather than be pessimistic and refute it. It is neater and hence produces a pattern that can then be established. Fortunately people are opposed to this copycat assessment of the past and more and more are questioning earlier writings. However, the author alludes to fraud that follows the acceptance of statistics in our day to day life. Because it has been written thus it is true has become a common statement particularly on the stock market. Enormous failures have perhaps pointed out to the investor that fraud can and does occur.

The last chapter repeats part of the title: The drunkard's walk. What predicts success in life? can one control one's success in life? These are the queries presented in the last chapter and Bill Gates was one of the stars. But the author determines that success is by chance although one can input into those chances to improve the success rate. I think of myself very successfully giving talks on DNA with repeat requests when suddenly I stopped. It wasn't for lack of things to say but rather direction. This wasn't the direction I wanted to move in and so I passed up on success to continue my pursuit of the past and I am happier for it. Had I been younger would I have moved that way? Probably not, I was more interested in success in my business than in my pursuit of ancestry!

I would highly recommend this book. It is a fantastic diversion from genealogy and yet it, like my pursuit of our son in law's ancestry sharpened my skills in genealogy. I must steer away from allowing my preconceived notions to colour how I read results.