The Wrong Answer Faster

Download or read book The Wrong Answer Faster written by Michael Goodkin and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2012-01-18 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The fascinating story behind the machines that trade trillions of dollars every day “A Bildungsroman, one jacket blurb calls this book—and sure, it’s a traditional coming-of-age tale. But the story itself is anything but conventional. The pleasures of the book lie in the story of their bumpy path to success.” Canadian Business In 1968, Michael Goodkin is about to graduate from Columbia University. While his classmates interview for jobs, he daydreams of seeing the world as a man of independent means. Noticing that there are no computers on Wall Street and drawing on his experiences as a failed teenage investor and successful gambler, he has an epiphany: since no one knows the right price for anything, the only way to beat the market is to make a computer that comes up with the wrong answer faster than the professionals. And thus begins a journey that takes this provincial Midwesterner from nearly broke to opulent Park Avenue. The Wrong Answer Faster is the story of unintended consequences: how a technique originally created to minimize market risk spiraled into a multi-trillion dollar game with unparalleled risks. Having founded and sold a firm that changed the world, Goodkin left New York to travel and play backgammon—only to return to found another groundbreaking firm, Numerix, a software company that substituted computational physics for econometrics to better manage derivative risk. The story of the computerization of Wall Street by the man at the helm Packed with keen insights, based almost entirely on poker, backgammon and game theory Goodkin's unique insight to the markets is that everyone has the wrong answers The solution is not to try to beat the market but to come up with the wrong answers faster The epic tale of the untold story how one man with a great idea decided not to play the market but to revolutionize the financial world for generations to come by creating the most ground breaking tool for market players since the ticker tape.

Download or read book Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper written by Robert Bryce and published by PublicAffairs. This book was released on 2014-05-13 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the face of today's environmental and economic challenges, doomsayers preach that the only way to stave off disaster is for humans to reverse course: to de-industrialize, re-localize, ban the use of modern energy sources, and forswear prosperity. But in this provocative and optimistic rebuke to the catastrophists, Robert Bryce shows how innovation and the inexorable human desire to make things Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper is providing consumers with Cheaper and more abundant energy, Faster computing, Lighter vehicles, and myriad other goods. That same desire is fostering unprecedented prosperity, greater liberty, and yes, better environmental protection. Utilizing on-the-ground reporting from Ottawa to Panama City and Pittsburgh to Bakersfield, Bryce shows how we have, for centuries, been pushing for Smaller Faster solutions to our problems. From the vacuum tube, mass-produced fertilizer, and the printing press to mobile phones, nanotech, and advanced drill rigs, Bryce demonstrates how cutting-edge companies and breakthrough technologies have created a world in which people are living longer, freer, healthier, lives than at any time in human history. The push toward Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper is happening across multiple sectors. Bryce profiles innovative individuals and companies, from long-established ones like Ford and Intel to upstarts like Aquion Energy and Khan Academy. And he zeroes in on the energy industry, proving that the future belongs to the high power density sources that can provide the enormous quantities of energy the world demands. The tools we need to save the planet aren't to be found in the technologies or lifestyles of the past. Nor must we sacrifice prosperity and human progress to ensure our survival. The catastrophists have been wrong since the days of Thomas Malthus. This is the time to embrace the innovators and businesses all over the world who are making things Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper.

Download or read book written by and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Faster written by James Gleick and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2000-09-05 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the bestselling, National Book Award-nominated author of Genius and Chaos, a bracing new work about the accelerating pace of change in today's world. Most of us suffer some degree of "hurry sickness." a malady that has launched us into the "epoch of the nanosecond," a need-everything-yesterday sphere dominated by cell phones, computers, faxes, and remote controls. Yet for all the hours, minutes, and even seconds being saved, we're still filling our days to the point that we have no time for such basic human activities as eating, sex, and relating to our families. Written with fresh insight and thorough research, Faster is a wise and witty look at a harried world not likely to slow down anytime soon.

Download or read book The Ask and the Answer written by Patrick Ness and published by Candlewick Press. This book was released on 2010-10-18 with total page 559 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Part two of the literary sci-fi thriller follows a boy and a girl who are caught in a warring town where thoughts can be heard – and secrets are never safe. Reaching the end of their flight in The Knife of Never Letting Go, Todd and Viola did not find healing and hope in Haven. They found instead their worst enemy, Mayor Prentiss, waiting to welcome them to New Prentisstown. There they are forced into separate lives: Todd to prison, and Viola to a house of healing where her wounds are treated. Soon Viola is swept into the ruthless activities of the Answer, while Todd faces impossible choices when forced to join the mayor’s oppressive new regime. In alternating narratives the two struggle to reconcile their own dubious actions with their deepest beliefs. Torn by confusion and compromise, suspicion and betrayal, can their trust in each other possibly survive?

Download or read book Human Compatible written by Stuart Russell and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2019-10-08 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The most important book on AI this year." --The Guardian "Mr. Russell's exciting book goes deep, while sparkling with dry witticisms." --The Wall Street Journal "The most important book I have read in quite some time" (Daniel Kahneman); "A must-read" (Max Tegmark); "The book we've all been waiting for" (Sam Harris) A leading artificial intelligence researcher lays out a new approach to AI that will enable us to coexist successfully with increasingly intelligent machines In the popular imagination, superhuman artificial intelligence is an approaching tidal wave that threatens not just jobs and human relationships, but civilization itself. Conflict between humans and machines is seen as inevitable and its outcome all too predictable. In this groundbreaking book, distinguished AI researcher Stuart Russell argues that this scenario can be avoided, but only if we rethink AI from the ground up. Russell begins by exploring the idea of intelligence in humans and in machines. He describes the near-term benefits we can expect, from intelligent personal assistants to vastly accelerated scientific research, and outlines the AI breakthroughs that still have to happen before we reach superhuman AI. He also spells out the ways humans are already finding to misuse AI, from lethal autonomous weapons to viral sabotage. If the predicted breakthroughs occur and superhuman AI emerges, we will have created entities far more powerful than ourselves. How can we ensure they never, ever, have power over us? Russell suggests that we can rebuild AI on a new foundation, according to which machines are designed to be inherently uncertain about the human preferences they are required to satisfy. Such machines would be humble, altruistic, and committed to pursue our objectives, not theirs. This new foundation would allow us to create machines that are provably deferential and provably beneficial.

Download or read book Thinking, Fast and Slow written by Daniel Kahneman and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2011-10-25 with total page 511 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Major New York Times Bestseller *More than 2.6 million copies sold *One of The New York Times Book Review's ten best books of the year *Selected by The Wall Street Journal as one of the best nonfiction books of the year *Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient *Daniel Kahneman's work with Amos Tversky is the subject of Michael Lewis's best-selling The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds In his mega bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, world-famous psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning our next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems shape our judgments and decisions. Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Topping bestseller lists for almost ten years, Thinking, Fast and Slow is a contemporary classic, an essential book that has changed the lives of millions of readers.