William Poundstone
William Poundstone is an American author, columnist, and skeptic.
To hedge the bets he made every working day, Meriwether kept a set of rosary beads in his briefcase.
From Adam Smith through John Maynard Keynes, economics had been mostly talk. At Harvard economics was talk. At MIT, Samuelson made it math.
For reasons mathematical, psychological, and sociological, it is a good idea to use a money management system that is relatively forgiving of estimation errors.
A bit is worth 10,000 basis points.
Shannon's most radical insight was that meaning was irrelevant.
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.
The problem with winning at blackjack and sports betting is that sooner or later a big guy in a suit tells you to leave.
"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.
Expectation is a statistical fiction, like having 2.5 children.
Your second ducat, like your second million, is never quite as sweet.