William Poundstone

Well, I don't think I'll be outguessing and outwitting "almost everybody" after reading this, but it was still an interesting book. With topics ranging from rock, paper, scissors strategies to office pools to the stock market, it's a good bet every chapter will not be of equal interest to a reader. The chapter on the stock market was a struggle for me to get through, and I didn't care much about the sports-related chapters either.
But the book explored some interesting ideas about how our minds tend to work, how bad people are at randomness and how we see patterns where there aren't any.
The introductory chapters to Parts One and Two were more fascinating than many of the chapters that followed, but I still liked several of the topics that were covered. The chapters on passwords, crowd-sourced ratings, manipulated and fake numbers were good, as well as the chapters in Part Two on big data and retail prices. It was also handy that the author did a summary of tips and strategies at the end of each chapter.
There's probably something for everyone in here, and it's worth a look.… (more)