The House Advantage: Playing the Odds to Win Big in Business
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As part of the notorious MIT Team depicted in Ben Mezrich’s now classic Bringing Down the House, Jeff Ma used math and statistics to master the game of blackjack and reap handsome rewards at casinos. Years later, Ma has inspired not only a bestselling novel and hit movie, but has also started three different companies—the latest of which, Citizen Sports, is an innovative marriage of sports, betting, and digital technology—and launched a successful corporate speaking career. The House Advantage reveals Ma’s cutting-edge mathematical insights into the world of statistics and makes them applicable to a wide business audience. He argues that numbers are the key to analyzing nearly everything in the world of business, from how to spot and profit from global market inefficiencies to having multiple backup plans in anticipation of every probability. Ma’s stories and business lessons are as intriguing as they are universally applicable. Publishers Weekly Ma, the math whiz and subject of Ben Mezrich’s bestselling Bringing Down the House, turns his savvy to business. A former professional card counter on the MIT blackjack team, Ma used statistics to beat the game, and his enthusiasm for the power of data and for overcoming emotion to make the best decisions proves persuasive. Though his lessons aren’t particularly new, his methods and thrilling stories of card counting in Vegas gives his book a compelling boost. He instructs leaders to recall that past performance, like a dealt blackjack hand, has an impact on the future; to avoid groupthink and a “hot hand,” or overconfidence, at all costs; and to prioritize what the data says. Even those who do not consider themselves math types can benefit from posing business issues as follows: a simple question helps focus a complex mathematical model and that complex mathematical model helps solve a very important business problem. It’s a spirited—if simplified—approach to decision making. (July)
AcknowledgmentsForeword Ben Mezrich Mezrich, Ben1 The Religion of Statistics 12 Why the Past Matters 233 Think Like a Scientist 434 The Importance of Asking Questions 635 The Impractical Search for Perfection 816 Using Numbers to Tell a Story 997 Never Fear 1198 Making the Right Decision 1379 When I Won, We All Won 15910 Why People Hate Math and What to Do with Them 17311 The Brain Cells in Your Stomach 191Epilogue 211Appendix: Basic Strategy Chart 227Notes 229Index 235
