A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market

From America's liveliest writer on mathematics, a witty and insightful book on the stock market and the irrepressibility of our dreams of wealth. In A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market best-selling author John Allen Paulos demonstrates what the tools of mathematics can tell us about the vagaries of the stock market. Employing his trademark stories, vignettes, paradoxes, and puzzles (and even a film treatment), Paulos addresses every thinking reader's curiosity about the market: Is it efficient? Is it rational? Is there anything to technical analysis, fundamental analysis, and other supposedly time-tested methods of picking stocks? How can one quantify risk? What are the most common scams? What light do fractals, network theory, and common psychological foibles shed on investor behavior? Are there any approaches to investing that truly outperform the major indexes? Can a deeper knowledge of mathematics help beat the odds?All of these questions are explored with the engaging erudition that made Paulos's A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper and Innumeracy favorites with both armchair mathematicians and readers who want to think like them. Paulos also shares the cautionary tale of his own long and disastrous love affair with WorldCom. In the tradition of Burton Malkiel's A Random Walk Down Wall Street and Jeremy Siegel's Stocks for the Long Run , this wry and illuminating book is for anyone, investor or not, who follows the markets-or knows someone who does.

ISBN 0465054811   Volumes 1 ISBN13 9780465054817 (What's this?)   Weight (grammes) 191 Publisher The Perseus Books Group   Published in New York Imprint Basic Books   Previous ISBN 9780465054800 Format Paperback   Height (mm) 204 Publication date 14 Apr 2004   Width (mm) 135 DEWEY 332.6322   Spine width (mm) 16 DEWEY edition DC21   Academic level General Pages 224

"With accustomed humor and apt examples, Paulos tackles complex computations that are vaguely understood and frequently misapplied by Wall Street pros."

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