Enticing elucidation beneath good humored history.
Is there a secret mathematical equation to beat the stock-market smarties and outsmart the blackjack dealers? There sure is, says this erudite author. You can bet on it.
Poundstone (Carl Sagan, 1999, etc.) offers a simple formula known as the proportional Kelly criterion. Using it, you can never lose your entire bankroll, and you will have a real edge. He touts the system with scholarship and documentation. And it’s all artfully packaged with diverting tales of geniuses and gangsters. There are MIT scholars and Bell Lab theorists like Claude Shannon, Ed Thorp and the eponymous J.L. Kelly, and there are the colorful gamblers and crooks from Vegas to Wall Street like Bugsy Siegel and Ivan Boesky. There’s ambitious young Rudy Giuliani and irascible old Paul Samuelson. The math geeks, con men, arbitrageurs and professors contribute their respective talents to conjectures regarding horse-racing in Hong Kong and hedge-fund management in Princeton. We are given instruction in the arcana of information theory, card-counting, portfolio construction, fat-tail distributions and logarithmic utility. Thus, we are led, quite ingenuously, into B-school notions and economic theory with real math and actual graphs. If the academic medicine gets a bit thick, it goes down quite well with the sugar of entertaining anecdotes. It’s those stories that provide a selective picture of our civilization, a sociological survey of how risk is taken. For a good way to manage risk, Poundstone says, he’s got the horse right here. Its name is Kelly. Readers will have to decide whether to simply bet their beliefs the old-fashioned way or to sign on to the discipline of Kelly’s formula.
Enticing elucidation beneath good humored history.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2005
ISBN: 0-8090-4637-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Hill and Wang/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2005
Brockway (The End of Economic Man, 1991, etc.) provides here a selection from ten years of musings on ``The Dismal Science'' from his monthly column for The New Leader. Proving himself as crotchety, humanist, and left-leaning as ever, Brockway tackles such capitalist-economic sacred cows as the theory of the natural rate of unemployment (``counterproductive as well as immoral''), the GNP (the figure generally used is ``a moldy fudge''), and even the seemingly irreproachable law of supply and demand. He points out in the title essay that economics is not a natural science at all; it is ``a branch of ethics.'' Human beings can control supply and demand (by charging less than they could for a life-saving drug, for example) and they could reduce unemployment if they wanted to. And once again Brockway poses that challenging and provocative question: Why don't they?
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-393-03884-X
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1995
This autobiography of the inventor and pitchman of Mr. Microphone and the Ronco Electric Food Dehydrator has virtually nothing to say, and its amusing moments are primarily of the laughing-at rather than laughing-with variety. A familiar face to most American TV viewers, Popeil has experienced a fascinating series of triumphs and setbacks on his way to becoming the king of the hucksters. Employing a mix of chutzpah and charisma, he has peddled an unbelievable assortment of cockamamie contraptions to the tune of $1 billion in sales. This should have been a good book. The products themselvesfrom the smokeless ashtray to GLH Formula #9 (spray-on hair)have all the comic impact of an old Honeymooners episode. And Popeil's rise from poverty-stricken peddler on Chicago's Maxwell Street to prolific inventor and dashing infomercial host packs a powerful Runyonesque punch. But this telling of the saga (despite the help of USA Today TV columnist Graham) is so disorganized and badly written that any sparks are quickly extinguished. The choppy, declarative style allows only for a catalog of ``this happened, then that happened,'' with absolutely no introspection. To be sure, there are funny moments (Popeil's brother hawks wise in Woolworth's: ``You want one and the lady wants one in the rear. . . ``), and Popeil is endearingly impervious to the fact that many consider his wares the epitome of junk. But wait, there's more! By the time the book descends into its second part, in which Popeil shares with budding entrepreneurs such intimate ``Key Points'' as ``Shop around and get several bids,'' clever readers will have put it down in favor of the Home Shopping Network. Don't add this to the list of useless whatchamacallits that Popeil has already bamboozled you into obtaining. (b&w photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Oct. 13, 1995
ISBN: 0-385-31378-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1995
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
