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Bernstein Peter L.. Against the Gods
Acknowledgments
Introduction
TO 1200: BEGINNINGS
Chapter 1. The Winds of the Greeks and the Role of the Dice
Chapter 2. As Easy as I, II, III
1200–1700: A THOUSAND OUTSTANDING FACTS
Chapter 3. The Renaissance Gambler
Chapter 4. The French Connection
Chapter 5. The Remarkable Notions of the Remarkable Notions Man
1700–1900: MEASUREMENT UNLIMITED
Chapter 6. Considering the Nature of Man
Chapter 7. The Search for Moral Certainty
Chapter 8. The Supreme Law of Unreason
Chapter 9. The Man with the Sprained Brain
Chapter 10. Peapods and Perils
Chapter 11. The Fabric of Felicity
1900–1960: CLOUDS OF VAGUENESS AND THE DEMAND FOR PRECISION
Chapter 12. The Measure of Our Ignorance
Chapter 13. The Radically Distinct Notion
Chapter 14. The Man Who Counted Everything Except Calories
Chapter 15. The Strange Case of the Anonymous Stockbroker
DEGREES OF BELIEF: EXPLORING UNCERTAINTY
Chapter 16. The Failure of Invariance
Chapter 17. The Theory Police
Chapter 18. The Fantastic System of Side Bets
Chapter 19. Awaiting the Wildness
Bibliography
Name Index
Subject Index
WILEY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
Отрывок из книги
The suggestion that I write a book about risk came from the late Erwin Glickes, then president of The Free Press. Erwin was a man who projected copious amounts of power, persuasiveness, and charm. Although he considered my long experience as a professional investor to be sufficient qualification for the task he had in mind, I soon discovered, as I had feared, that risk does not begin and end on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
The vastness of the subject matter is daunting. Risk touches on the most profound aspects of psychology, mathematics, statistics, and history. The literature is monumental, and each day’s headlines bring many new items of interest. Consequently, I have had to be selective. I believe, however, that the omission of any important material was the result of a decision on my part rather than an act of oversight.
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The result was a book that is extraordinary by any standard. Liber Abaci made people aware of a whole new world in which numbers could be substituted for the Hebrew, Greek, and Roman systems that used letters for counting and calculating. The book rapidly attracted a following among mathematicians, both in Italy and across Europe.
Liber Abaci is far more than a primer for reading and writing with the new numerals. Fibonacci begins with instructions on how to determine from the number of digits in a numeral whether it is a unit, or a multiple of ten, or a multiple of 100, and so on. Later chapters exhibit a higher level of sophistication. There we find calculations using whole numbers and fractions, rules of proportion, extraction of square roots and roots of higher orders, and even solutions for linear and quadratic equations.
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