William Poundstone Quotes

Samuelson, however, hedged his personal bets - by putting some of his own money in Berkshire Hathaway.

Expectation is a statistical fiction, like having 2.5 children.

Use "entropy" and you can never lose a debate, von Neumann told Shannon - because no one really knows what "entropy" is.

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.

Shannon's most radical insight was that meaning was irrelevant.

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.

There were many at Bell Labs and MIT who compared Shannon's insight to Einstein's. Others found that comparison unfair - unfair to Shannon.

Kelly was aware that there is one type of favorable bet available to everyone; the stock market.

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.

At a bare minimum, understanding entails being able to detect an internal contradiction: a paradox.

Samuelson spotted a mistake in Bacheliers work. Bachelier's model had failed to consider that stock prices cannot fall below zero.

Your second ducat, like your second million, is never quite as sweet.

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

A bit is worth 10,000 basis points.

The story of the Kelly system is a story of secrets - or if you prefer, a story of entropy.

In real conversations, we are always trying to outguess each other.

The ultimate compound return rate is acutely sensitive to fat tails.

The best strategy is one that offers the highest compound return consistent with no risk of going broke.

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