Quote

There is a deep connection between Bernoulli's dictum and John Kelly's 1956 publication. It turns out that Kelly's prescription can be restated as this simple rule: When faced with a choice of wagers or investments, choose the one with the highest geometric means of outcomes.

William Poundstone

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

William Poundstone
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: March 29
Author
Biographer
Journalist
Turns
Investment
Prescription
Simple
Connections
Prescriptions
Means
Rule
Investments
Mean
Choice
Publication
Highest
Faced
Wagers
Deep
Outcomes
Dictum
Choose
Connection
Geometric
Choices
John
Kelly

More quotes by William Poundstone

Image
The best paradoxes raise questions about what kinds of contradictions can occur-what species of impossibilities are possible.
William Poundstone
Image
Your second ducat, like your second million, is never quite as sweet.
William Poundstone
Image
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
Image
There were many at Bell Labs and MIT who compared Shannon's insight to Einstein's. Others found that comparison unfair - unfair to Shannon.
William Poundstone
Image
The story of the Kelly system is a story of secrets - or if you prefer, a story of entropy.
William Poundstone
Image
Kelly was aware that there is one type of favorable bet available to everyone the stock market.
William Poundstone
Image
Expectation is a statistical fiction, like having 2.5 children.
William Poundstone
Image
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.
William Poundstone
Image
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.
William Poundstone
Image
Samuelson spotted a mistake in Bacheliers work. Bachelier's model had failed to consider that stock prices cannot fall below zero.
William Poundstone
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Samuelson, however, hedged his personal bets - by putting some of his own money in Berkshire Hathaway.
William Poundstone
Image
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.
William Poundstone
Image
Shannon's most radical insight was that meaning was irrelevant.
William Poundstone
Image
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.
William Poundstone
Image
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
Image
The assumption that anything true is knowable is the grandfather of paradoxes.
William Poundstone
Image
Use entropy and you can never lose a debate, von Neumann told Shannon - because no one really knows what entropy is.
William Poundstone
Image
At a bare minimum, understanding entails being able to detect an internal contradiction: a paradox.
William Poundstone