High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! A random walk, sometimes denoted RW, is a mathematical formalisation of a trajectory that consists of taking successive random steps. For example, the path traced by a molecule as it travels in a liquid or a gas, the search path of a foraging animal, the price of a fluctuating stock and the financial status of a gambler can all be modeled as random walks. The term random walk was first introduced by Karl Pearson in 1905. Random walks have been used in many fields: ecology, economics, psychology, computer science, physics, chemistry, and biology. Random walks explain the observed behaviors of processes in these fields, and thus serve as a fundamental model for the recorded stochastic activity.