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Against the gods : the remarkable story of risk / Peter L. Bernstein.

by Bernstein, Peter L.

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John Wiley & Sons, c1998.

Risk -- Social aspects.

Risk management -- History.

Decision making -- History.

Risk management.

Decision making.

9780471295631 (pbk.)

xi, 383 p. : il ; 23 cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

To 1200: beginnings -- The winds of the Greeks and the role of the dice -- As easy as I,II, III -- 1200-1700: a thousand outstanding facts -- The Renaissance gambler -- The French connection -- The remarkable notions of the remarkable notions man -- 1700-1900: measurement unlimited -- Considering the nature of man -- The search for moral certainty -- The supreme law of unreason -- The man with the sprained brain -- Peapods and perils -- The fabric of felicity -- 1900-1960: clouds of vagueness and the demand for precision -- The measure of our ignorance -- The radically distinct notion -- The man who counted everything except calories -- The strange case of the anonymous stockbroker -- Degrees of belief: exploring uncertainty -- The failure of invariance -- The theory police -- The fantastic system of side bets -- Awaiting the wildness.

"People constantly make choices, arrive at decisions, and take risks. Savers buy stocks, doctors perform operations, poker players figure the odds, and business managers launch new products. Without the instruments of risk management, such decisions would be impossible, because no one could figure out the likelihood of success. Yet the idea that we need not listen to soothsayers for advice is less than five hundred years old. This book blends biography with history and science to show how famous thinkers like Pascal, Bernoulli, Bayes, Keynes, Markowitz, Arrow and von Neumann paved the way from superstition to the supercomputer. But Bernstein tells of others as well, less known but equally important in developing the theory and practice of risk management. The book also explains significant concepts including probability, uncertainty, the distinction between chance and skill, the interactions between gambling and investing, and rational versus irrational decision-making."--From publisher.

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