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「醉漢走路」又名「隨機漫步」，展現為物理現象則是花粉微粒的「布朗運動」。這個看似微不足道的問題，卻因為愛因斯坦的一篇論文揭露其奧秘，開啟了量子理論的革命性思潮，自此，隨機性法則被視為比因果律更基本。影響所及，許多事物到底是必然(命運)還是偶然(機會)，科學知識往往顛覆了我們的直覺。 閱讀之後，認識了「機率與統計」的發展史；更重要的是，明白了人類的大腦喜歡因果關係，卻難以想像隨機的世界，因此在尋找模式的本能下，經常會發生「誤把運氣當才華」的偏誤，倒果為因，用成就來定義能力。其實，成功是才能、努力及機遇的聯合產兒，有人光憑偏財運一次就中了頭彩，有人傾家蕩產屢屢投注卻是血本無歸。仔細研讀成功者的傳記，會發現通常難免有絕處逢生的經驗，成功往往屬於堅持到底者，放棄的人，永遠不知道自己離成功有多近。因此，若成功者說自己是運氣好，這可能不是謙詞，而是洞明世事的智慧之言。才能加努力不保證會成功；然而，可以操之在己的是：多一次嘗試，就多一次成功的機會。所以，成功者最重要的特質或許是：持續努力，等待好運的到來。成者為王敗者為寇，成功之後，世人就會歸因於你的才能和努力，其實或許你的勝出只是因為比競爭者好運，中肯而言，曰：天意如此。 複雜系統的互動經常沒有簡單的答案，懂一點「機率與統計」很有用，至少可以減低將隨機事件解釋為因果關係的偏誤。其中，「向平均數迴歸」就是一個很重要的基本概念。值得注意的是，統計學可以估算整個群體的機率分布情形，卻難以預測特定個體的命運。所以，「事後諸葛易，未卜先知難」是人間的常態，這說明了：其實隨機性事件到處都有。 綜上，隨機、無常是世間的常態，人類的大腦卻偏好因果論。從此觀點，佛家的「因、緣、果」已將隨機性整合在內，實在是理解現實世界最完整的模型，我想。

This book certainly reminds me of Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow" and Nassim Nicholas Taleb's "The Black Swan". Actually, Kahneman's name was mentioned a lot (together with Amos Tversky) in this book and it seems that Kahneman and Tversky were the pioneers who taught us how much people didn't understand randomness. I think, availability bias (p.28/26th line), heuristics (p.174/5th line) and confirmation bias (p.189/24th line) that the author discusses in this book have also been discussed at least in Kahneman's book. Comparing this book with the above-mentioned books, this author here has discussed more in depth how to calculate the probability. At some point, I thought he's really teaching people how to calculate probability (which is probably difficult for most readers) and I've even attempted some calculations. But soon I've realized that this is not really the case as he soon turned to narrative and conceptual type of discussion. Interestingly, somebody (from ETH Zürich) has helped calculate the probability of a person with a positive mammogram actually having breast cancer (as described in the 1st paragraph of p.117) to be ~9.4%. Overall, it's a very interesting and educational book to read even though I've read something similar before. The author does try a little to show how to calculate probability that other books aimed for the general public usually don't try. It contains a lot of interesting history that I didn't know. Eg. people didn't write about probability calculations until the 16th century --- apparently first by Gerolamo Cardano, who died in 1576 and his "Games of Chance" was not published (as it was rejected by the publisher in his lifetime!) until 1663 --- "By then his methods of analysis had been reproduced and surpassed" (last sentence on p.59). Apparently, the ancient Greek seemingly knew nothing about probability and only liked those quarters of mathematics as perfect as geometry (p.26-28) --- which is another new point of view for me :-) In the "Index" (at the end of the book), they have listed pages "190-91" for "confirmation bias" on p.241. But actually it first appeared on the 24th line of p.189.

提供不少社會上慣常看到的統計話術，像是民意調查、球員或基金經理人超越同行的表現率、疾病得病率等等隱含的謬誤，更多的當然就是我們以往認為八九不離十的統計結果，最後卻可能因為小小的隨機事件而翻盤。

偶然和必然實在比我想法中還要難分，能分清偶然和必然是預測分析的首要工作。

很好看的一本書 被我列入博客來購物車等特價XD 從古早時代的數學歷史講起，延伸到社會學跟人類心理學 隨機跟不確定性在我們的生活中無所不在 誠如它所說：人類的本性就是想要掌控環境 所以在很多地方我們會用結果論來看待這個世界 而忽略了隨機跟不確定性的影響 讓我用另一種角度來看事情 有種豁然開朗的感覺 最後幾章讓我覺得很勵志XD 真的很好看的一本書 深入淺出 非常推薦

I bought the chinese translation from a local store and read about 1/3 of it but finally decide to switch to the original version. I glad I made that decision. it's no doubt that reading the original text is much more articulate and more comprehensible. this little book was fun and covered the essential aspects of "chance" and "randomness". as i see, one thing the author differs from kahneman, which the author quoted quite a few times in this book, is that he believed, even randomness dominated the outcome of things more than any other things, it's still necessary to plan . this book is definitely more fun but it's quite clear to me that thinking fast and slow shall be rated a notch higher.

One of my favourite non-fiction works. Mlodinow provides a very complete picture of important statistical phenomena, with an interesting historical note for each (who knew centuries-ago mathematicians could be so much fun?), easy examples to understand them, and most importantly, their consequences for explaining the way as humans we behave and the mistakes we constantly make without realizing it. I like this book because he very clearly explains what I've always known about many human pursuits but I was not able to put into words; that due to a lack of fundamental understanding those pursuits are flawed and sometimes serious mistakes are made. He also explains why when these constant mistakes are right under our nose we fail to recognize them. A must-read

絕對是我2011看過最棒的一本書!