Drunkard's Walk

The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives by Leonard Mlodinow.

A very good book about the importance of randomness in our lives. The author, who teaches the topic at CalTech, likes history and gives lots of examples of how people are not very good at understanding the implications of the random. No equations, but some of the examples require effort to understand, and are worth it. Being a math and modeling geek I have seen many of the examples before and he does a very good job of making them understandable.

He discusses for example, the heelbone 'dice' used by the ancient Greeks for gambling, called astragali. And the surprisingly deep Monty Hall problem (The WP description of this problem linked to here is very detailed)

Wordy at times, could have used a few more diagrams, but eminently useful for thinking about the world. Good introduction for managers dealing with the subject.

Mlodinow's web site.