The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives

This irreverent and illuminating presentation explores how random events shape the world and how human intuition fights that fact. Although our brains naturally want to see patterns and order, life doesn't necessarily work like that. As an example, Mlodinow questions why a wine was given five out of five stars, the highest rating, in one journal and in another it was called the worst wine of the decade?

As he discusses the basics of probability and statistics, Mlodinow provides wonderful illustrations from fields as wide-ranging as sports, medicine, psychology, and the stock market. Clear, accessible, very friendly, engaging, and often very witty, this speech can be enjoyed by absolutely everyone (including the math-phobic).

The Grand Design

Leonard Mlodinow, the physicist/author behind The Drunkard's Walk, explores his collaborative work with Stephen Hawking in their #1 bestseller, The Grand Design. Created for any lay audience, this speech is presented in a very interesting, detailed, thought provoking, and often humorous way.

Mlodinow discusses why some of life's biggest questions can be answered by science and scientific theory, including: Why is there something? Why do we exist? Why this set of natural laws? The theories he expounds upon are sometimes old and sometimes groundbreakingly new, but all will either surprise you, educate you, or both. You will ponder reality and your own existence – as well as the reality of your existence!

Mlodinow offers Stephen Hawking's theories of a multiverse in which there are an almost infinite number of universes that can arise spontaneously from the "big bang." He includes a well-rounded historical summary of scientific discoveries, right up to and including the most recent ideas in string theory and particle physics. This is a presentation that is not to be missed.