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Expectation is a statistical fiction, like having 2.5 children.

William Poundstone

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William Poundstone
Age: 69
Born: 1955
Born: March 29
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Expectation
Expectations
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More quotes by William Poundstone

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The story of the Kelly system is a story of secrets - or if you prefer, a story of entropy.
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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A bit is worth 10,000 basis points.
William Poundstone
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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.
William Poundstone
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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.
William Poundstone
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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.
William Poundstone
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The assumption that anything true is knowable is the grandfather of paradoxes.
William Poundstone
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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.
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
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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.
William Poundstone
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Samuelson, however, hedged his personal bets - by putting some of his own money in Berkshire Hathaway.
William Poundstone
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Shannon's most radical insight was that meaning was irrelevant.
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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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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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
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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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Your second ducat, like your second million, is never quite as sweet.
William Poundstone
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The ultimate compound return rate is acutely sensitive to fat tails.
William Poundstone
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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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The best strategy is one that offers the highest compound return consistent with no risk of going broke.
William Poundstone