
Claude Shannon, the Las Vegas Shark (2017) - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/50/emergence/claude-shannon-the-las-vegas-cheat
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codesushi42
It is really Edward Thorp who was the shark. He was the one who pitched the
idea to Shannon of building the first wearable computer to beat roulette.
Shannon was not very much interested in talking to Thorp until he proposed the
idea face to face.

Ed Thorp is still alive and has written some interesting biographies. Check
out A Man for All Markets if you are interested. The Physics of Wall Street is
also a good overview of quantitative financial analysis.

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deehouie
I have to mention this book again. There was another thread on HN about Bill
Benter who used statistics to win horse races, which almost went without
mention of this book.

The Perfect Bet: How Science and Math Are Taking the Luck Out of Gambling,
Adam Kucharski, Basic Books, 2016.

The one thing that few people notice, or bother to say is, despite both
(Shannon, Thorp, the Eudaomonics, etc) being distinguished mathematician and
physicist, they didn't quite make money out of their skill. Until few yrs
later, the same institution produced the famous Blackjack team, featured in
the moive 21.

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latte_machiato
So sad he died of Alzheimer...

A man with such a rich professional portfolio:

"While Shannon worked in a field for which no Nobel prize is offered, his work
was richly rewarded by honors including the National Medal of Science (1966)
and honorary degrees from Yale (1954), Michigan (1961), Princeton (1962),
Edin- burgh (1964), Pittsburgh (1964), Northwestern (1970), Oxford (1978),
East Anglia (1982), Carnegie-Mellon (1984), Tufts (1987), and the University
of Pennsylvania (1991). He was also the first recipient of the Harvey Prize
(1972), the Kyoto Prize (1985), and the Shannon Award (1973). The last of
these awards, named in his honor, is given by the Information Theory Society
of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and remains
the highest possible honor in the community of researchers dedicated to the
field that he invented. His Collected Papers, published in 1993, contains 127
publications on topics ranging from communications to computing, and juggling
to “mind-reading” machines."

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sampo
Some UCLA physicists did the same 2 decades later:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eudaemonic_Pie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Eudaemonic_Pie)

~~~
not2b
Correction: UCSC (UC Santa Cruz).

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patricklynch
While we're throwing out book recommendations, I'll mention one by William
Poundstone, who's quoted in the article.

Fortune's Formula: The Untold Story of the Scientific Betting System That Beat
the Casinos and Wall Street (2006)

If you want more background on Thorpe, or Shannon, or a layman's view of
gambling and information theory, it's a fun read.

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paracyst
A lot of this story was told in "The Quants" by Scott Patterson:
[https://www.amazon.com/Quants-Whizzes-Conquered-Street-
Destr...](https://www.amazon.com/Quants-Whizzes-Conquered-Street-
Destroyed/dp/B0036UZCNG)

------
ProAm
Ed Thorp strikes again.

