Author(s): John Allen Paulos

Business Finance Management

In early 2000 John Allen Paulos, celebrated thinker and writer on mathematics, set out to use his insights into areas such as statistics, probability and psychology to examine the maths of the marketplace. However, he soon discovered that playing the market was far more addictive than he had anticipated . . . This is his fascinating, funny and often excruciating story of how Paulos gambled - and lost - his money in the course of his investigations into the stockmarket: how his 'hot tip' on a company called WorldCom turned out to be a disaster; how, even as the share price started to plummet, he kept on buying; how a usually rational man discovered a ruthless gambling streak; how he kept secret from his wife just how much he had invested; and how he tried to convince himself - using mathematical logic - that everything would be all right.