為什麼出布容易贏？從球賽、股市到選擇題，在未知中輕鬆致勝的22個預測練習

Q:<br />Recap: How to Outguess Multiple-Choice Tests<br />• On true-false tests, “true” answers are more common.<br />• On multiple-choice tests with four answers, the second one (B) is most often correct.<br />• “None of the above” and “all of the above” answers are disproportionately likely to be correct.<br />• The answer that was right on the previous question (“true” or [D], say) is less likely to be right on the present question.<br />• A strategy for standardized tests like the SAT is to eliminate the outlier. Avoid guessing an answer that is too different from the others.<br />(c)<br />Q:<br />Recap: How to Outguess Fake Numbers<br />• When the digits of recent data depart from the company’s customary distributions, it can be a tip-off to fraud.<br />• Embezzlers and fraud artists making up numbers unconsciously overuse descending pairs of digits (like 10, 21, 32, etc.)<br />• Fakers underuse doubled digits (like 00 or 55), thinking they don’t look “random” enough.<br />(c)

This was an ARC that I won through Goodreads First Reads.<br /><br />I enjoyed this book - it appealed to me both on a practical level and a nerd level. On the practical side, there's plenty of usable information on how to play games (tennis, lottery, rock/paper/scissors) while the nerdy side loves the graphs and math explanations of why these trends and streaks work or, more likely, don't. This book is billed as a "hands-on guide to turning life's odds in your favor" and it rarely disappoints. I'm not much of a gambler but the explanation of football/basketball pools were interesting as was rock/paper/scissors (Who knew there was competitive RPS?) There are explanations of randomness - it does <i> not</i> look like what you expect it to and thus it can used to track people cheating on their expense accounts and taxes. I liked the explanation of the mentalist's trick - and the mnemonic used "TERASABOS" for the effect. The Terasabos effect is "This effect requires acting skills and balls of steel". The practical side of me liked the tips on when to buy large ticket items (if you find a 20% discount from average best price over the past year, buy it.) Similarly, the advice on the stock market seems very useful - sell stocks when the Shiller PE is 28 and buy when the Shiller PE is 13. Keep the funds in fixed-income (bonds, etc) when not in stocks. Interesting and informative.

Rock Breaks Scissors is billed as a “practical guide to outguessing and outwitting almost everybody”. Sounds fun? It was, mostly. This book covers so much ground, from tennis to the Oscars to (you guessed it) rock paper scissors. This is both good and bad, since covering everything means you have less time for the specifics. The chapters were rather short – some were only a couple pages long.<br /><br />Another downside is that it’s hard to be interested in every chapter. The Rock Paper Scissors chapter was so much fun, but the sports betting chapters were considerably less so (I’m not a gambler). Now, I read the book all the way through (because that is what I do), so you can trust me when I say that you should feel free to read what sounds interesting and ignore what doesn’t. That’s really the best way.<br /><br />Be warned: There is some dense math in this book (especially in the Stock Market chapter), so if you’re not a math person, you might just want to avoid this book altogether. Full disclosure.<br /><br />So I give it a 3.5, gaining points for being awesome and losing them being all over the place (in terms of topics).<br /><br />PS: I got this book for free through Goodreads First Reads<br />

Very very interesting book. I can't wait to try out what I learned from reading it. I have already lent it to my son and my husband wants to borrow it next. It really is a good read.

Kitap ilk başta önsözüyle dişe dokunur, hayata dair daha elle tutulur örneklerle başlamışken sonrasında bana göre çok fazla tekrara düşerek sonlara doğru iyice sıkıcı bir hal alıyor. 2014 yılında basılmış olması itibariyle verdiği vaka örneklerini çok daha eski yıllardan seçtiğinden daha önceden de okumuştum. Bütün kitabını bahisler, onları nasıl daha az zararla kapatmak veya kazanmak için belli matematiksel stratejiler olasılıklar oluşturmak üzerine kurmuş. Çok fazla tabloya veriye ve rakama boğuyor bizi. Dolayısıyla bana sürekli bu tekrarlar yüzünden sıkıcı geldi. Beklentimi karşılamadı maalesef.

Well, I don't think I'll be outguessing and outwitting "almost everybody" after reading this, but it was still an interesting book. With topics ranging from rock, paper, scissors strategies to office pools to the stock market, it's a good bet every chapter will not be of equal interest to a reader. The chapter on the stock market was a struggle for me to get through, and I didn't care much about the sports-related chapters either.<br />But the book explored some interesting ideas about how our minds tend to work, how bad people are at randomness and how we see patterns where there aren't any. <br />The introductory chapters to Parts One and Two were more fascinating than many of the chapters that followed, but I still liked several of the topics that were covered. The chapters on passwords, crowd-sourced ratings, manipulated and fake numbers were good, as well as the chapters in Part Two on big data and retail prices. It was also handy that the author did a summary of tips and strategies at the end of each chapter.<br />There's probably something for everyone in here, and it's worth a look.

Kitap hiç fena sayılmaz. Sürekli tahmin yapmak zorunda kaldığımız yaşamımızda tahmin etmede daha yetenekli hale gelinebilir. Yazar da okurun daha iyi bir tahminci olması için birçok konuya değinmiş.

As someone who enjoys reading practical guides on statistics and other related mathematical subjects [1], I found this book to be refreshing and enjoyable the way it dealt with the subject of how to outsmart others, and even machines, and the main way this could be done was to have a sense of humility about our abilities to be random. Indeed, over and over again in this roughly 300 page book the need for people to be humble and to not exaggerate our own abilities at strategic memory and intuition was shown to be the most essential aspect of outsmarting others. In other words, the best way to be smarter than others was to both know patterns and to know ourselves to be beings who operate within fairly constrained patterns that can be immensely easy to determine across a variety of human endeavors, from playing Paper, Rock, Scissors to winning office pools for NCAA Tournament brackets to falsifying our expense records and tax returns. The fact that mankind is so bad at being random is actually quite remarkable.<br /><br />The book is a practical book on the intersection between statistics and psychology, divided roughly into two halves. The first half consists of chapters containing material on how to outsmart others based on the lack of randomness of human beings, looking at the history of the Zenith broadcast experiments and containing advice on how to outsmart rock, paper, scissors (usually by guessing paper), how to outguess multiple-choice tests (by picking none/all and a few other tips), how to outguess the lottery (by not playing), how to outguess tennis serves, how to outguess baseball and football, soccer penalty kicks, card games, passwords, crowd-sourced ratings, fake numbers, manipulated numbers, and Ponzi schemes. Most of these depend on the fact that real random numbers alternate far less often than the random numbers people chose do, and that human beings alternate a lot because we are most comfortable that way. The second part of the book consists on how to outguess people by dismissing the "hot hand" theory that suppose people get "in the zone" when they really do not, telling people how to outguess bracket pools, office football pools, Oscar pools, big data, retail and home prices, the future, and the stock market. Overall, the book reminds us that we cannot escape fortune's wheel.<br /><br />People reading this book and appreciating it are likely to be somewhat cynical people. Someone reading this book is likely to be at least somewhat interested in strategic thinking. As is often the case, outsmarting others is often both more simple and more complicated than it first appears. It is easiest to outsmart people when we are humble about our own ability to be different than other people. What makes us predictable and often less than strategically savvy is a misguided belief that we are somehow smarter than everyone else. Our arrogance makes us stupider, and our humility makes us wiser. It is a curious truth, and one that will likely surprise many of the readers of this book who will wish to have their ego gratified, or who may think that they are somehow immune from the patterns of humanity when they are not, but those readers who are savvy will see the truth in this book's approach.<br /><br />[1] See, for example:<br /><br /><a target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow" href="https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2016/01/03/book-review-why-flip-a-coin/">https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...</a><br /><br /><a target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow" href="https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2016/01/29/book-review-the-democracy-index/">https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...</a><br /><br /><a target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow" href="https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2015/04/21/on-equal-pay-for-equal-play-in-tennis/">https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...</a><br /><br /><a target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow" href="https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2015/08/10/book-review-statistics-concepts-and-controversies/">https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...</a><br /><br /><a target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow" href="https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2015/09/01/book-review-dataclysm/">https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress...</a>

I really enjoyed reading this book, but more so the theory and psychology behind the choices make than the "operational" chapters that explains "how to guess". I would definitely recommend this book for the background info and the stories, such as the Outguessing Machine, but would tell people not to expect a ton from the "How to" chapters; you're not going to become rich by "Outguessing the Lottery"

If you wish for a book that will make you a master at winning everything, you'll be disappointed. If you are a fan of probability theory and psychology, you'll probably like it. There is a lot of material to be absorbed. I found many snippets of very interesting information. Overall I'm happy I picked it off the "new books" shelf.