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The best paradoxes raise questions about what kinds of contradictions can occur-what species of impossibilities are possible.

William Poundstone

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William Poundstone
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: March 29
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The best strategy is one that offers the highest compound return consistent with no risk of going broke.
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The assumption that anything true is knowable is the grandfather of paradoxes.
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The engine driving the Kelly system is the law of large numbers. In a 1713 treatise on probability, Swiss mathematician Jakob Bernoulli propounded a law that has been misunderstood by gamblers (and investors) ever since.
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In real conversations, we are always trying to outguess each other.
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Use entropy and you can never lose a debate, von Neumann told Shannon - because no one really knows what entropy is.
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Are there any mythical beasts which aren't simple pastiches of nature? Centaurs, minotaurs, unicorns, griffons, chimeras, sphinxes, manticores, and the like don't speak well for the human imagination. None is as novel as a kangaroo or starfish.
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A bit is worth 10,000 basis points.
William Poundstone
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Expectation is a statistical fiction, like having 2.5 children.
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People tend to be clueless about prices. Contrary to economic theory, we don't really decide between A and B by consulting our invisible price tags and purchasing the one that yields the higher utility, he says. We make do with guesstimates and a vague recollection of what things are “supposed to cost.”
William Poundstone
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There were many at Bell Labs and MIT who compared Shannon's insight to Einstein's. Others found that comparison unfair - unfair to Shannon.
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The ultimate compound return rate is acutely sensitive to fat tails.
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Average isn't so hot at the race track given those steep track takes. Average is pretty decent for stocks, something like 6 percent above the inflation rate. For a buy-and -hold investor, commissions and taxes are small.
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Samuelson spotted a mistake in Bacheliers work. Bachelier's model had failed to consider that stock prices cannot fall below zero.
William Poundstone
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Kelly was aware that there is one type of favorable bet available to everyone the stock market.
William Poundstone
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At a bare minimum, understanding entails being able to detect an internal contradiction: a paradox.
William Poundstone
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Shannon's most radical insight was that meaning was irrelevant.
William Poundstone
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Your second ducat, like your second million, is never quite as sweet.
William Poundstone
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In The Tricky Art of Co-Existing, Sandi Toksvig navigates life's little dilemmas with wit and not-so-common sense. You'll learn the strange history of common courtesy and the one true secret of social success: how to not drive everyone around you crazy.
William Poundstone
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The more improbable the message, the less compressible it is, and the more bandwidth it requires. This is Shannon's point: the essence is its improbability.
William Poundstone
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Bernoulli's real contribution was to coin a word. The word has been translated into English as utility. It describes this subjective value people place on money.
William Poundstone