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Loading... Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street (edition 2005)by William Poundstone
Work InformationFortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street by William Poundstone
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Notable discussion of Kelly's formula. ( ) The story of Kelly gambling, which must surely count as the most tempting application of information theory ever. This is related in the usual effective and enjoyable Poundstone style, by means of many small sections, alternately developing arguments, sketching the lives of participants (here, mostly Claude Shannon and Ed Thorp), explaining debates, and pursuing interesting historical asides. It's a little kaleidoscopic, but in the end it knits together very effectively. (The applications to biological evolution are not discussed.) Not up there with his best books (The Recursive Universe, Prisoner's Dilemma and Labyrinths of Reason), but it's unfair to hold that against this. no reviews | add a review
In 1956 two Bell Labs scientists discovered the formula for getting rich. One was mathematician Claude Shannon, neurotic father of our digital age; the other was John L. Kelly, Jr., a Texas-born, gun-toting physicist. Together they applied information theory--the basis of computers and the Internet--to the problem of making as much money as possible, as fast as possible. Shannon and MIT mathematician Edward O. Thorp took the "Kelly formula" to the tables of Las Vegas. It worked. They realized that there was even more money in the stock market, specifically in the risky trading known as arbitrage. Shannon became a successful investor, using his wealth to drop out of the scientific world. This book traces how the Kelly formula sparked controversy even as it made fortunes at racetracks, casinos, and trading desks.--From publisher description. No library descriptions found. |
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