Edward O. Thorp
Autor(a) de Beat the Dealer: A Winning Strategy for the Game of Twenty-One
About the Author
Obras por Edward O. Thorp
Etiquetado
Conhecimento Comum
- Data de nascimento
- 1932-08-14
- Sexo
- male
- Nacionalidade
- USA
- Educação
- University of California, Los Angeles
- Ocupações
- professor
- Organizações
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
University of California, Irvine
Membros
Críticas
Listas
BusinessBooks (1)
Prémios
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Estatísticas
- Obras
- 7
- Membros
- 582
- Popularidade
- #43,090
- Avaliação
- 3.7
- Críticas
- 8
- ISBN
- 19
- Línguas
- 2
> I made a practice of holding back part of [my chemical sample] so that, if this were done to me, I could prove that I had correctly analyzed whatever I had. On the very last sample given us to evaluate that semester, I was told I got it wrong. I knew better, and to prove it I asked that the part I had saved be tested. The decision on my appeal was left to the teaching assistant for my lab sections, who refused to act. The points I lost caused me to end the term in fourth place rather than first. Outraged, I did not enroll in chemistry the second semester and changed my major to physics
> So this was the setting when Claude Shannon and I, in September 1960, set to work to build a computer to beat roulette. So far as we knew, everyone else thought physical prediction was impossible.
> Claude taught me to juggle three balls, which he did while riding a unicycle. He also had a steel cable tied between two tree stumps and walked along it, encouraging me to learn with the aid of a balance bar. He could do any two of the three tricks together: juggle three balls, ride the unicycle, and balance on the tightrope, and his goal was to be able to do all three at once
> One day I noticed two huge pieces of Styrofoam that looked as if they could be worn like snowshoes. Claude said they were water shoes that enabled him to “walketh upon the water,” in this case the Mystic Lake in front of his house
> The Princeton office hired him. The five top people there were indicted and tried on sixty-four charges of stock manipulation, stock parking, tax fraud, mail fraud, and wire fraud. The defendants, in addition to Jay Regan, were our head trader, head convertible trader, the CFO and his assistant, and a Drexel Burnham convertible trader. Neither I nor any of the forty or so other partners and employees in the Newport Beach office had any knowledge of the alleged acts in the Princeton office. We were never implicated in, or charged with, any wrongdoing in this or any other matter. Our two offices, more than two thousand miles apart, had very different activities, functions, and corporate cultures.
> He argued that if I were wrong, he would needlessly sacrifice his best investment. I answered that I could not be wrong: I had proven from public records that the trades never happened. He was being sent make-believe trade slips. I made the point that to ignore this could put his job at risk. That clinched it. He closed his accounts with Madoff and got his money back. Over the next eighteen years, he watched other Madoff investors seem to get rich. I wonder how often he regretted hiring me.
> At the last minute I came up with the title “What Every Young Girl Should Know” and refused to tell anyone what I was going to say about it. The room was packed, with attendance beyond anything previously seen. Most agreeably, in addition to the usual mostly male audience, there were lots of pretty coeds. From their questions and their expressions afterward, my listeners weren’t disappointed. I had talked about the solution to the so-called marriage problem and had made the math behind it understandable.… (mais)