Samuelson, however, hedged his personal bets - by putting…

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

— William Poundstone

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…

— William Poundstone

“In view of this, it may seem remarkable that anything as complex as a text of Hamlet exists. The observation that Hamlet was written…

— William Poundstone

Expectation is a statistical fiction, like having 2.5 children.

— William Poundstone

“In 1894 Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone patents expired. Within a few years, over 6,000 local telephone companies were competing for the U.S. market.”

— William Poundstone

Paradox is thus a much deeper and universal concept than the ancients would have dreamed. Rather than an oddity, it is a mainstay of…

— William Poundstone

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…

— William Poundstone

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

A bit is worth 10,000 basis points.

— William Poundstone

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…

— William Poundstone

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…

— William Poundstone

“The stumbling block isn't the certainty effect per se. It's the way that smart people are influenced by mere words, by the way the…

— William Poundstone

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

— William Poundstone

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

— William Poundstone

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

— William Poundstone