William Poundstone

Thomas Bayes devised a theorem that allowed him to assign probabilities to events that had never happened before, and it is being used in contemporary thought to answer questions about human existence.

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...

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

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Examines how "price consultants" and retailers convince consumers to pay more for less, and how negotiation coaches offer similar advice for businesspeople cutting deals. Prices are a collective hallucination. Here, author William Poundstone reveals the hidden psychology of value. In psychological experiments, people are unable to estimate "fair" prices accurately and are strongly influenced by the unconscious, irrational, and politically incorrect....