Leonard Mlodinow

Perception requires imagination because the data people encounter in their lives are never complete and always equivocal.

The outline of our lives, like the candles flame, is continuously coaxed in new directions by a variety of random events that, along with our responses to them, determine our fate.

It might seem daunting to think that effort and chance, as much as innate talent, are what counts. But I find it encouraging because, while our genetic makeup is out of our control, our degree of effort is up to us. And the effects of chance, too, can be controlled to the extent that by committing ourselves to repeated attempts, we can increase our odds of success.

What I have learned, above all, is to keep marching forward because the best news is that since chance does play a role, one important factor in success is under our control: the number of at bats, the number of chances taken, the number of opportunities seized.

Another lottery mystery that raised many eyebrows occurred in Germany on June 21, 1995. The freak event happened in a lottery called Lotto 6/49, which means that the winning six numbers are drawn from 1 to 49. On the day in question the winning numbers were 15-25-27-30-42-48. The very same sequence had been drawn previously, on December 20, 1986. It was the first time in 3,016 drawings that a winning sequence had been repeated. What were the chances of that? Not as bad as you'd think. When you do the math, the chance of a repeat at some point over the years comes out to around 28 percent.

After my two attempts at gently raising the issue of string theory, one afternoon I stepped into Feynman's office to ask him what he really thought."Can we talk a little about string theory?" I asked. … "Don't you think there are aspects of it that seem very promising?""Promising? What does it promise? Does it promise to tell you the mass of the proton? No. What does it promise to tell you?""Well, no one knows how to extract any quantitative predictions yet, but—""You're wrong. It does make a quantitative prediction. Do you know what that is?"I looked at him. My mind was a blank."It requires that we live in ten dimensions. Is it reasonable to have a theory that requires ten dimensions? No. Do we see those dimensions? No. So it rolls them up into tiny balls or cylinders too small to detect. So the only prediction it makes is one that has to be explained away because it doesn't fit with observation."