most recent 30 from http://mathoverflow.net 2013-05-20T14:26:17Z http://mathoverflow.net/feeds/question/22009 http://www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/rdf http://mathoverflow.net/questions/22009/random-walk-anecdote Ross Snider 2010-04-21T03:17:26Z 2010-04-21T09:43:27Z

<p>I'm looking for an anecdote about a mathematician who studied random walks. I'm attempting to write an article and hope to include the story (but only if I can get the details correct). I'll try to do my best describing it in hopes someone else has heard it and knows a name or the full story.</p> <p>A mathematician was walking through the park and entertaining mathematical whims. He noticed that he kept running into this same couple as he wandered around aimlessly. He wasn't sure if this behaviour was expected by chance or whether perhaps the female of the couple thought that he was cute. He rushed home to analyse the situation in terms of random walks in two dimensions.</p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/22009/random-walk-anecdote/22010#22010 Gerry Myerson 2010-04-21T03:59:05Z 2010-04-21T03:59:05Z

<p>The anecdote is about Polya, and it is in his contribution, Two incidents, to the book, Scientists at Work: Festschrift in Honour of Herman Wold, edited by T Dalenius, G Karlsson, and S Malmquist, published in Sweden in 1970. It was recently quoted on page 229 of David A Levin and Yuval Peres, Polya's Theorem on random walks via Polya's Urn, Amer Math Monthly 117 (March, 2010) 220-231. </p>

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/22009/random-walk-anecdote/22034#22034 Keivan Karai 2010-04-21T09:43:27Z 2010-04-21T09:43:27Z

<p>My favorite is this one attributed to Kakutani: "A drunk man will find his way home, but a drunk bird may get lost forever." referring to the fact that the simple random walk in $Z^2$ is recurrent while it is transient in $Z^d$ for $d>2$.</p> <p>Here you can find a reference to the anecdote: <a href="http://m759.xanga.com/122558830/item/" rel="nofollow">http://m759.xanga.com/122558830/item/</a></p>