Schrodinger's "What is life " book quote: : The laws of physics are statistical in nature In the book What is life? by Erwin Schrodinger, he says that the laws of physics are statistical in nature.

Today, thanks to the 
  ingenious work of biologists, mainly of 
  geneticists, during the last thirty or forty years, 
  enough is known about the actual material 
  structure of organisms and about their 
  functioning to state that, and to tell precisely 
  why present day physics and chemistry could not 
  possibly account for what happens in space and 
  time within a living organism.
The arrangements of the atoms in the most vital parts of an 
  organism and the interplay of these arrangements 
  differ in a fundamental way from all those 
  arrangements of atoms which physicists and 
  chemists have hitherto made the object of their 
  experimental and theoretical research. Yet the 
  difference which I have just termed fundamental 
  is of such a kind that it might easily appear slight 
  to anyone except a physicist who is thoroughly 
  imbued with the knowledge that the laws of 
  physics and chemistry are statistical throughout. 
For it is in relation to the statistical point of view 
  that the structure of thevital parts of living 
  organisms differs so entirely from that of any 
  piece of matter that we physicists and chemists 
  have ever handled physically in our laboratories 
  or mentally at ourwriting desks. 
  The non physicist cannot be expected 
  even to grasp let alone to appreciate the 
  relevance of the difference in ‘statistical 
  structure’ stated in terms so abstract as I have 
  just used.

Could you please explain this to a non physics student?
 A: Up until just after the turn of the 20th century scientists, physicists believed that nature was very deterministic, predictable. Schrodinger was however of a new generation of scientists along with Bohr, Heisenberg and Planck that developed a theory of the very small, quantum physics (aka quantum mechanics). 
The very core of quantum mechanics is wrapped in uncertainty; Schrodinger discovered the wave equation and Heisenberg the uncertainty principle. Both were equivalent and both did not predict with certainty but rather probability.
Although Einstein also contributed to the new physics with his papers on Brownian motion and the photoelectric effect, he held fast to determinism even up to his death in 1955. At the 5th Solvay Conference he debated with Bohr and Einstein's famous quote: "God doesn't play dice with the world"
But the success of quantum mechanics has played out and uncertainty indeed appears to be the rule in physics.
A: Some phenomena in nature are not deterministic to great extent. Specially in quantum physics. Many of quantum mechanics experiments can not be explained at individual event level but they can be very accurately predicted at an average level. That gives the impression that the laws of physics are statistical in nature. But the reason for this is our inability to measure and determine outcomes at individual event level. 
As one example, if we align an electron's spin along horizontal axis, and then try to measure its spin along vertical axis, it will be either up, or down. We can not say about such a specific electron whether the spin will be up for sure, or down for that matter. But QM laws tell us that on an average, 50% of such electrons will measure up spin and 50% of them will measure down spin. When we conduct the experiments on a very large number of such electrons, 50/50 outcome is found to be true to six sigma levels. So, the averages work as predicted. Average is a statistical value. Statistics brings probability into picture.
This makes some people think the laws are statistical in nature. But they actually are not necessarily that way. We do not have tools sensitive enough to predict the outcomes at individual electron level.
This happens due to randomness in nature, which is way too complex to calculate.
As a classical example, we can predict how much water evaporate from a pool on daily basis and so can predict how long it will take for the pool to dry up. But, there is no way for us to predict - what day/time, a specific water molecule will evaporate from the pool. We probably do not even have a way to tell one molecule from another, so it even becomes a moot point to ask to make that prediction in the first place.
What makes QM phenomena very strange is - when we try to explain, how the statistical results are framed by nature. Again, this strangeness exists and survives due to our inability to explain the physical mechanism behind the outcomes.
Taking a crude example, if we keep pouring dirt at one place, it always takes the shape of a heap. We can say, the heap is formed due to probability of how many particles land where. But we can also say that, wherever individual particles land, the heap is actually shaped up by gravity to keep things in balance on overall basis.
While we can predict the shape will be a heap, we can not tell where a specific particle of dirt will be stabilized in the heap. There is so much randomness involved that it is just not possible for us to tell it.
But on the other hand, there are numerous examples where we can accurately predict at individual event level. For example, if we know the speed and angle of a projectile, we can accurately calculate where it will land (ignoring wind effects etc.) And all such projectiles will land exactly as predicted. So, there is no probability involved here, or we can say, the probability is 100%, which basically is a deterministic law, not a statistical law.
