We judge people and initiatives by their results, and we expect events to happen for good, understandable reason. But our clear visions of inevitability are often only illusions.

Listeners instinctively detect that when we lower the usual pitch of our voice, we are sad, and when we raise it, we are angry or fearful.

Our inner weighing of evidence is not a careful mathematical calculation resulting in a probabilistic estimate of truth, but more like a whirlpool blending of the objective and the personal. The result is a set of beliefs - both conscious and unconscious - that guide us in interpreting all the events of our lives.

What I've 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.

Nonverbal communication forms a social language that is in many ways richer and more fundamental than our words.

When we are in the grasp of illusion - or, for that matter, whenever we have a new idea - instead of searching for ways to prove our ideas wrong, we usually attempt to prove them correct. Psychologists call this the confirmation bias, and it presents a major impediment of our ability to break free from the misinterpretation of randomness.

One thing that feeds into the way you experience the social world is your mood - and one thing that affects your mood is the weather.