In A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market, best-selling author John Allen Paulos demonstrates what the tools of mathematics can tell us about the vagaries of the stock market. Employing his trademark stories, vignettes, paradoxes, and puzzles (and even a film treatment), Paulos addresses every thinking reader's curiosity about the market - Is it efficient? Is it rational? Is there anything to technical analysis, fundamental analysis, and other supposedly time-tested methods of picking stocks? How can one quantify risk? What are the most common scams? What light do fractals, network theory, and common psychological foibles shed on investor behavior. Are there any approaches to investing that help beat the odds and truly outperform the major indexes?

All of these questions are explored with the engaging erudition that made Paulos's A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper and Innumeracy favorites with both armchair mathematicians and readers who want to think like them. Paulos also shares the cautionary tale of his own long and disastrous love affair with WorldCom. In the tradition of Burton Malkiel's A Random Walk Down Wall Street and Jeremy Siegel's Stocks for the Long Run, this wry and illuminating book is for anyone, investor or not, who follows the markets - or knows someone who does.

The world's wittiest mathematician has done it again! Paulos' hilarious account of getting trampled while running with the bulls will leave you laughing-and more than a little wiser.-- Sylvia Nasar, Knight Professor of Business Journalism at Columbia University, author of A Beautiful Mind

For the average investor it's hard to know what to make of the stock market after the dizzying roller coaster ride of the past decade. John Allen Paulos is well-known for explaining hard concepts in an easy-to-understand way, and A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market offers an engaging overview of everything from "betas" to the efficient market hypothesis. You may not put down the book knowing how to make a killing, you'll have a better understanding of the underlying logic of the stock market. And you'll have been entertained in the bargain. -- Max Boot, Senior Fellow, Council on Foreign Relations, and former features editor, Wall Street Journal

In an age that shuttles between irrational exurberance and irrational despair, John Allen Paulos gives us a timely, eye-opening and hilarious account of how the market both follows and defies mathematical principles. -- Richard Florida, Author of The Rise of the Creative Class

John Allen Paulos is the author of six other books, including the best-selling Innumeracy and A Mathematician Reads the Newspaper. He is a Professor of Mathematics and former Presidential Scholar at Temple University in Philadelphia, adjunct Professor at the Columbia School of Journalism, a regular columnist on ABCNews.com, and a frequent commentator in national publications on the intersection of mathematics, news stories, and everyday life. His web site is at www.math.temple.edu/paulos.