| 商家名称 | 信用等级 | 购买信息 | 订购本书 |
 |
 |
Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street |  |
 |
|
Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street | |
In 1956 two Bell Labs scientists discovered the scientific formula for getting rich. One was mathematician Claude Shannon, neurotic father of our digital age, whose genius is ranked with Einstein's. The other was John L. Kelly Jr., a Texas-born, gun-toting physicist. Together they applied the science of 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 Las Vegas. It worked. They realized that there was even more money to be made in the stock market. Thorp used the Kelly system with his phenomenonally successful hedge fund, Princeton-Newport Partners. Shannon became a successful investor, too, topping even Warren Buffett's rate of return. Fortune's Formula traces how the Kelly formula sparked controversy even as it made fortunes at racetracks, casinos, and trading desks. It reveals the dark side of this alluring scheme, which is founded on exploiting an insider's edge.
Shannon believed it was possible for a smart investor to beat the market―and Fortune's Formula will convince you that he was right.
媒体推荐“Seldom have true crime and smart math been blended together so engagingly.” ―The Wall Street Journal
“An amazing story that gives a big idea the needed star treatment . . . Fortune's Formula will appeal to readers of such books as Peter L. Bernstein's Against the Gods, Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Fooled by Randomness, and Roger Lowenstein's When Genius Failed. All try to explain why smart people take stupid risks. Poundstone goes them one better by showing how hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management, for one, could have avoided disaster by following the Kelly method.” ―Business Week (four stars)
“'Fortune's Formula' may be the world's first history book, gambling primer, mathematics text, economics manual, personal finance guide and joke book in a single volume. Poundstone comes across as the best college professor you ever hand, someone who can turn almost any technical topic into an entertaining and zesty lecture.” ―The New York Times Book Review
作者简介William Poundstone is the bestselling author of nine nonfiction books, including Labyrinths of Reason and The Recursive Universe.
网友对Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street的评论
如果，假设，无知道胜率，那我岂不是神了
OK, everyone knows what slimeballs casino operators are, so when a book comes out explaining how someone gave them a comeuppance, its hard to resist. But this book is a lot more. It's a fun mix of information theory, mob history, big-money investment folklore (including the trillion-dollar blowup of Long Term Capital Management), and more. All of it is held together by a mathematical glue that appeals to geeks like me. Even better, the personalities of the protagonists are not lost on the story. You feel like you know these guys, and the book is hard to put down.
William Poundstone is a fine author. I've re-read very few books, and Poundstone's "Prisoner's Dilemma" is one of them. "Fortune's Formula will be another.
It was fascinating to read through almost the entire history of "gambling" that evolved from Claude Shannon's information theory and Kelly Criterion. Very well written with humors and well-organized structure. I could imagen the vast work by the author. It is always a great pleasure to read a book which feels like I'm stealing some great person's life-work. I strongly recommend this book to those who has interest in making 'bets' in their lives. After all, aren't we all making 'bets?'
This book is a concise look at the evolution of formal investment theory, with continual contextual references to its ties to gambling and to organized crime. It also is a hilarious and insightful history of gambling from the Bernoulli's in the 1700s through the hedge fund traders of the late 1990's.
The author devotes over 50 pages to notes and the index. This was appreciated since I wanted to look up more about so many of the anecdotes he included.
Mr. Poundstone poignantly describes the downfall of high-flying firms such as LTCM, where the investment wizards went from the darlings of Wall Street to the dredges of the investment community in large part because they were so clever; and they started to believe they were infallible.
One LTCM road-show presentation was held at the insurance company Conseco in Indianapolis. Andrew Chow, a Conseco derivatives trader, interrupted Scholes. "There aren't that many opportunities," Chow objected. "You can't make that kind of money in Treasury markets."
Scholes snapped: "You're the reason - because of fools like you we can." (Page 281)
Warren Buffett marveled at how "ten or 15 guys with an average IQ of maybe 170" could get themselves "into a position where they can lose all their money." That was much the sentiment of Daniel Bernoulli, way back in 1738, when he wrote: "A man who risks his entire fortune acts like a simpleton, however great may be the possible gain." (Page 291)
He also points out the real world flaws in some theoretically appealing scams. The St. Petersburg Wager seems mathematically correct; yet it overlooks a vitally important constraint (pages 182-184). Another is the unfounded weight we unconsciously give to historical returns, as evidenced by his retelling of another Warren Buffett story:
In a 1984 speech, Buffett asked his listeners to imagine that all 215 million Americans pair off and bet a dollar on the outcome of a coin toss. The one who calls the toss incorrectly is eliminated and pays his dollar to the one who was correct.
The next day, the winners pair off and play the same game with each other, each now betting $2. Losers are eliminated and that day's winners end up with $4. The game continues with a new toss at doubled stakes each day. After twenty tosses, 215 people will be left in the game. Each will have over a million dollars.
According to Buffett, some of these people will write books on their methods: "How I Turned a Dollar into a Million in Twenty Days Working Thirty Seconds a Morning." Some will badger ivory-tower economists who say it can't be done: "If it can't be done, why are there 215 us?" "Then some business school professor will probably be rude enough to bring up the fact that if 215 million orangutans had engaged in a similar exercise, the result would be the same - 215 egotistical orangutans with 20 straight winning flips." (Page 314)
The author follows the lives of a few major contributors to investment theory, information theory, and betting theory: Claude Shannon, who invented Information Theory and paved the way for the digital computer age; John Kelly, who developed the formula for gains with no possibility of ruin; and Edward Thorpe, who built upon these findings and beat the roulette wheels, the blackjack tables and the investment fund managers.
It's a fast read - only 329 pages before the notes and index. I highly recommend it!
This book talks about the fundamentals about logic, information and probability. It talks a lot about Claude Shannon's story which is very attractive to me. And then it discusses the generation of information theory and the essence of it. As a scientific researcher in a very much related field (operations research), I find the discussion precise and accurate. It also talks about the story about several other important figures in the development of information theory, such as Kelly, Thorpe etc. In particular, it includes the debate over the celebrated Kelly's formula. This is the best book I have ever read on the topic of Kelly's formula. And it really explains it well. I will recommend this book to any person who is interested in information theory or computer science (or any related field).
Bought this book after I heard an interview with William Poundstone on the Michael Covel Trendfollowing podcast. He caught my interest and I bought the book and read the entire thing on vacation. It's an excellent read. Not only discusses the Kelly betting criterion, but gives a complete history of how it came about, the history of its use in gambling and betting prior to, how academia tied into it, how the mob used it, and so on. Very interesting read. Would definitely recommend this book.
喜欢Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat the Casinos and Wall Street请与您的朋友分享,由于版权原因，读书人网不提供图书下载服务
