Rock Breaks Scissors

Title:

A Practical Guide to Outguessing and Outwitting Almost Everybody

Author:

Poundstone, William

Subject:

Finance

Psychology

Nonfiction

Business

Description:

A practical guide to outguessing everything, from multiple-choice tests to the office football pool to the stock market. People are predictable even when they try not to be. William Poundstone demonstrates how to turn this fact to personal advantage in scores of everyday situations, from playing the lottery to buying a home. Rock Breaks Scissors is mind-reading for real life. Will the next tennis serve go right or left? Will the market go up or down? Most people are poor at that kind of predicting. We are hard-wired to make bum bets on "trends" and "winning streaks" that are illusions. Yet ultimately we're all in the business of anticipating the actions of others. Poundstone reveals how to overcome the errors and improve the accuracy of your own outguessing. Rock Breaks Scissors is a hands-on guide to turning life's odds in your favor.

Publisher:

Little, Brown Spark

Little, Brown and Company

Date:

2014/06/03

Digital Format:

READ IN BROWSER

ADOBE EPUB

KINDLE

Language:

English

ISBN:

9780316228084

Summary

A practical guide to outguessing everything, from multiple-choice tests to the office football pool to the stock market.

People are predictable even when they try not to be. William Poundstone demonstrates how to turn this fact to personal advantage in scores of everyday situations, from playing the lottery to buying a home. Rock Breaks Scissors is mind-reading for real life.

Will the next tennis serve go right or left? Will the market go up or down? Most people are poor at that kind of predicting. We are hard-wired to make bum bets on "trends" and "winning streaks" that are illusions. Yet ultimately we're all in the business of anticipating the actions of others. Poundstone reveals how to overcome the errors and improve the accuracy of your own outguessing. Rock Breaks Scissors is a hands-on guide to turning life's odds in your favor.

Author Notes

William Poundstone has been nominated twice for the Pulitzer Prize. Among his seven books are "The Recursive Universe," "Labyrinths of Reason," and "Big Secrets." He has also written extensively for network television and major magazines. He lives in Los Angeles.

(Publisher Provided)

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

In this intriguing and immensely useful volume, Poundstone (Are You Smart Enough to Work at Google?) examines how to outguess and outwit others in order to more accurately guess the outcomes of a variety of situations. In the first half of the tome, Poundstone examines those kinds of scenarios that are seemingly ruled by randomness-winning the lottery, guessing computer passwords, outwitting Ponzi schemes , and even besting other players in the childhood playground game from which this tome takes its name. But, he cautions, what seems to be random may be anything but. Quoting the mid-20th-century philosopher Hans Reichenbach, Poundstone notes that "'persons not acquainted with mathematics... are astonished at the clustering that occurs' in a true random sequence." In the book's second half, the author explores the idea of the "hot hand" theory, which posits that winning streaks are predictable. In that context, he explores such things as how to get the better of office football pools and how to outguess the stock market while offering educated strategies for coming out the victor in these situations. For anyone wanting to turn most of life's odds in their favor, this is a solid, enjoyable read. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

The title makes it sound kind of like one of those shady get-rich-quick books, but this is, in fact, a smart, engagingly written account of how to capitalize on other peoples' predictability (while at the same time, if we're paying attention, minimize our own predictability). With the smooth readability of John Allen Paulos, whose Innumeracy (1988) has some thematic similarities, Poundstone explores how our tendencies toward uniformity and simplicity, even when we think we're being random and complex, leave us open to exploitation by people who know more than we do, like the fact that, when asked to pick one object out of five lined up in a row, most people will pick the second or fourth, or that, in the game rock/paper/scissors, most men choose rock, and scissors is the least popular choice by both genders. There's some mathematics here the author explains what he's talking about in detail but it's clearly explained and easily accessible to the general reader. An enlightening book, though, sadly, much of the enlightenment comes from realizing that we're not as clever as we thought we were.--Pitt, David Copyright 2010 Booklist