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The assumption that anything true is knowable is the grandfather of paradoxes.

William Poundstone

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William Poundstone
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: March 29
Author
Biographer
Journalist
Knowable
Paradoxes
Paradox
Grandfather
Assumption
True
Anything

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Shannon's most radical insight was that meaning was irrelevant.
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Expectation is a statistical fiction, like having 2.5 children.
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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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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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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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Carl Friedrich Gauss, often rated the greatest mathematician of all time, played the market. On a salary of 1,000 thalers a year, Euler left an estate of 170,587 thalers in cash and securities. Nothing is known of Gauss's investment methods.
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Kelly was aware that there is one type of favorable bet available to everyone the stock market.
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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.
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Paradox is thus a much deeper and universal concept than the ancients would have dreamed. Rather than an oddity, it is a mainstay of the philosophy of science.
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The best paradoxes raise questions about what kinds of contradictions can occur-what species of impossibilities are possible.
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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.
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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 story of the Kelly system is a story of secrets - or if you prefer, a story of entropy.
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A bit is worth 10,000 basis points.
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Your second ducat, like your second million, is never quite as sweet.
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Samuelson, however, hedged his personal bets - by putting some of his own money in Berkshire Hathaway.
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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.
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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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The ultimate compound return rate is acutely sensitive to fat tails.
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