Rock Breaks Scissors: A Practical Guide to Outguessing and Outwitting Almost Everybody

Rock Breaks Scissors: A Practical Guide to Outguessing and Outwitting Almost Everybody

by William Poundstone
Rock Breaks Scissors: A Practical Guide to Outguessing and Outwitting Almost Everybody

Rock Breaks Scissors: A Practical Guide to Outguessing and Outwitting Almost Everybody

by William Poundstone

Paperback(Reissue)

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Overview

A practical guide to outguessing everything, from multiple-choice tests to the office football pool to the stock market.

People are predictable even when they try not to be. William Poundstone demonstrates how to turn this fact to personal advantage in scores of everyday situations, from playing the lottery to buying a home. Rock Breaks Scissors is mind-reading for real life.

Will the next tennis serve go right or left? Will the market go up or down? Most people are poor at that kind of predicting. We are hard-wired to make bum bets on "trends" and "winning streaks" that are illusions. Yet ultimately we're all in the business of anticipating the actions of others. Poundstone reveals how to overcome the errors and improve the accuracy of your own outguessing. Rock Breaks Scissors is a hands-on guide to turning life's odds in your favor.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780316228053
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Publication date: 09/08/2015
Edition description: Reissue
Pages: 320
Sales rank: 1,012,466
Product dimensions: 5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

William Poundstone is the author of fourteen books — including Rock Breaks ScissorsAre You Smart Enough to Work at Google?How Would You Move Mount Fuji?, and Fortune's Formula, which was Amazon Editor's pick for the number one nonfiction book of the year. He has written for the Believer, the EconomistEncyclopaedia BritannicaEsquireHarper'sHarvard Business Review, the New York Times op-ed page and Book Review, and Village Voice. Follow Poundstone on Twitter (@WPoundstone) and learn more at his website, home.williampoundstone.net

Table of Contents

Prologue: The Outguessing Machine 3

Part 1 The Randomness Experiment

1 The Zenith Broadcast 27

2 How to Outguess Rock, Paper, Scissors 50

3 How to Outguess Multiple-Choice Tests 57

4 How to Outguess the Lottery 68

5 How to Outguess Tennis Serves 78

6 How to Outguess Baseball and Football 83

7 How to Outguess Soccer Penalty Kicks 87

8 How to Outguess Card Games 90

9 How to Outguess Passwords 95

10 How to Outguess Crowd-Sourced Ratings 107

11 How to Outguess Fake Numbers 112

12 How to Outguess Manipulated Numbers 130

13 How to Outguess Ponzi Schemes 148

Part 2 The Hot Hand Theory

14 In the Zone 161

15 How to Outguess Basketball Bracket Pools 178

16 How to Outguess Office Football Pools 191

17 How to Outguess Oscar Pools 202

18 How to Outguess Big Data 207

19 How to Outguess Retail Prices 215

20 How to Outguess Home Prices 218

21 How to Outguess the Future 224

22 How to Outguess the Stock Market 232

Epilogue: Fortune's Wheel 266

Acknowledgments 269

Notes 271

Bibliography 285

Index 295

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