Search
Close this search box.

Beating the Odds

July 3, 2004

So I just got back from USENIX ’04, and I had planned to spend the flight writing up some observations on the conference. Unfortunately, these observations — as pithy as they no doubt will be — will have to wait: I ended up spending the flight inhaling Bringing Down the House by Ben Mezrich. While the book itself is not very well written,1 the subject is fascinating: a well-disciplined (and apparently successful) card-counting team from MIT. The book was brain candy in the purest sense: it was exhilerating and fun — but it definitely ruined my dinner.

If you’re looking for something with a little more meat in it, check out Tom Bass’s classic, The Eudaemonic Pie. Bass’s subjects are more interesting to me, if only because the problem they’re solving is so much harder: a group of physicists and computer scientists develop a device to give them an advantage over roulette. (After all, it’s just Newtonian physics, right?) And if the idea sounds incredibly implausible, just wait until you see how they implemented it. And while the “Bringing Down the House” protagonists seem destined for a life of overpaid corporate consulting and/or 12 step programs, the leader of the “Eudaemonic” tribe, Doyne Farmer, now writes papers for academic journals like Quantitative Finance from his roost at The Santa Fe Institute. Meatier stuff, to be sure.


1The author had an incredibly difficult time separating himself from the story — I don’t particularly care if a stripper was “on his lap” for an interview, and I care even less that he knew the principal protagonist through “a friend from Harvard.” I didn’t drop fifteen bones to read “The Making of ‘Bringing Down the House'”…

Leave a Reply

Recent Posts

September 2, 2024
November 18, 2023
November 27, 2022
October 11, 2020
July 31, 2019
December 16, 2018
September 18, 2018
December 21, 2016
September 30, 2016
September 26, 2016
September 13, 2016
July 29, 2016
December 17, 2015
September 16, 2015
January 6, 2015
November 10, 2013
September 3, 2013
June 7, 2012
September 15, 2011
August 15, 2011
March 9, 2011
September 24, 2010
August 11, 2010
July 30, 2010
July 25, 2010
March 10, 2010
November 26, 2009
February 19, 2009
February 2, 2009
November 10, 2008
November 3, 2008
September 3, 2008
July 18, 2008
June 30, 2008
May 31, 2008
March 16, 2008
December 18, 2007
December 5, 2007
November 11, 2007
November 8, 2007
September 6, 2007
August 21, 2007
August 2, 2007
July 11, 2007
May 20, 2007
March 19, 2007
October 12, 2006
August 17, 2006
August 7, 2006
May 1, 2006
December 13, 2005
November 16, 2005
September 13, 2005
September 9, 2005
August 21, 2005

Archives

Archives