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(0)William Poundstone
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
In 1956 two Bell Labs scientists discovered the scientific formula for getting rich. One was mathematician Claude Shannon, neurotic father of our digital age, whose genius is ranked with Einstein's. The other was John L. Kelly Jr., a Texas-born, gun-toting physicist. Together they applied the science of information theory-the basis of computers and the Internet-to the problem of making as much money as possible, as fast as possible. Shannon and MIT...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Our Electoral System is Fundamentally Flawed, But There's a Simple and Fair Solution
At least five U.S. presidential elections have been won by the second most popular candidate. The reason was a "spoiler"-a minor candidate who takes enough votes away from the most popular candidate to tip the election to someone else. The spoiler effect is more than a glitch. It is a consequence of one of the most surprising intellectual discoveries of the twentieth...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
The Book That Gives the Inside Story on Hundreds of Secrets of American Life --Big Secrets.
Are there really secret backward messages in rock music, or is somebody nuts? We tested suspect tunes at a recording studio to find out.
What goes on at Freemason initiations? Here's the whole story, including -- yes! -- the electric carpet.
Colonel Sanders boasted that Kentucky Fried Chicken's eleven secret herbs and spices "stand on everybody's shelf."...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Looks at the state of knowledge in the American public, and demonstrates how many areas of knowledge correlate with quality of life, politics, and behavior, arguing that being knowledgeable has significant value even when facts can be looked up with little effort.
Author
Publisher
Little, Brown and Company
Language
English
Formats
Description
From Wall Street to Silicon Valley, employers are using tough and tricky questions to gauge job candidates' intelligence, imagination, and problem-solving ability — qualities needed to survive in today's hypercompetitive global marketplace. For the first time, William Poundstone reveals the toughest questions used at Microsoft and other Fortune 500 companies — and supplies the answers. He traces the rise and controversial fall of employer-mandated...
Author
Language
English
Formats
Description
Each year about 28 million Americans begin a search for a new job. Millions more live in the age of the permanent job search, their online profiles eternally awaiting a better offer. Job seekers are more mobile and better informed than ever, aspiring to work for employers offering an appealing culture, a robust menu of perks, and opportunities for personal fulfillment and advancement. The result is that millions of applications stream to the handful...
Author
Language
English
Description
Every year, millions of applications stream to a handful of companies that regularly top the listings of best employers: Apple, Netflix, Amazon, Alphabet, Disney, SpaceX, Oracle, PricewaterhouseCoopers and others. In 2017, Tesla received as many as 200 applications for each vacancy, making it ten times more selective than Harvard. The only way to choose who to hire is with uniquely demanding questions that test imagination, persistence and creativity....
Author
Language
English
Description
Should you watch public television without pledging? Exceed the posted speed limit? Hop a subway turnstile without paying? These questions illustrate the "prisoner's dilemma", a social puzzle that we all face every day. Though the answers may seem simple, their profound implications make the prisoner's dilemma one of the great unifying concepts of science. Watching poker players bluff inspired John von Neumann to construct game theory, a mathematical...
Author
Language
English
Description
In the eighteenth century, the British minister and mathematician Thomas Bayes devised a theorem that allowed him to assign probabilities to events that had never happened before. It languished in obscurity for centuries until computers came along and made it easy to crunch the numbers. Now, as the foundation of big data, Bayes's formula has become a linchpin of the digital economy.
But here's where things get really interesting: Bayes's theorem...
Author
Language
English
Description
A Look at Life in the Year 2060
"The End of the Rainbow" details the scientific breakthroughs that have the potential to take humanity to a new age of abundance and happiness. Homes made of glass. Solar plants in space. Congestion-proof highways. A cure for aging. Control of the weather. A 32-hour work week. These are some of the fantastic things we could see in the next 40 years.
This book offers a refreshing break from the doom and gloom that...
Author
Publisher
Little, Brown and Company
Pub. Date
2014.
Language
English
Description
"Rock breaks scissors is based on a simple principle: people are unable to act randomly. Instead they display unconscious patterns that the savvy person can outguess. The principle applies to friends playing rock, paper, scissors for a bar tab as well as to the crowds that create markets for homes and stocks. With a gift for distilling psychology and behavioral economics into accessible advice, Poundstone proves that outguessing is easy, fun, and...