Talk:Edward O. Thorp

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Untitled[edit]

Bibliography PDF link to "Beat the Market" is broken... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.165.139.33 (talk) 16:20, 11 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not familiar with Thorp's work, specifically, but the number of ~5% HA for the dealer seems highly unlikely, if not downright impossible. Perhaps the OP meant .5%? --128.113.192.223 06:46, 1 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

A number of casino games operate with a HA of 5% or more (Caribbean Stud Poker for example). Thebigjc 16:01, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Scarne's Complete Guide to Gambling says 5.9%. Of course, that's assuming you hit on 16 and stand on 17 and never split, etc., but many Blackjack players do stupid things anyway. 64.121.55.220 01:23, 3 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Can anyone find a source for the topics birthdate? Thebigjc 16:01, 19 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Large amount of links?[edit]

What is with the large amount of links to mundane words? "by mob standards given their historical reco" has links to 'standard' and 'history'. What are the rules for this?


i removed most of them. Seems just cluttering the page with links that are not relevant.HichamVanborm 01:11, 14 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Fair use rationale for Image:Dr. Edward O. Thorp.jpg[edit]

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Hedging warrants[edit]

With Sheen Kassouf Thorp came up with a way of hedging warrants which is much the same work as Black, Scholes, and Merton did with option valuation. If anyone finds any Non Original Research it would make an interesting addition 11:02, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Supposedly Thorp had the Black-Scholes formula by indeed following up on his previous work (Black and Scholes make a comment that Thorp and his coauthor had not followed upon the idea that once the hedge was riskless that the expected return should be that of the riskless asset). But Thorp kept the info secret even when Merton was telling him about the work of Black and Scholes, because he was basically trying to make money off of it. This is mentioned in the BBC Horizon episode, The Midas Formula.

See Also: Black Scholes ?[edit]

Unless there's a way to bring the topic of Hedging warrents into the main article, should there be a "See Also" for Black Scholes since there is no reference to it in the main article?

See my comment above. His role in the Black-Scholes theory is important, as is now widely recognized. Unfortunately nobody has bothered writing about it in this article.

Removed ref[edit]

I removed the ref

<ref name="Kelly">Beat the Dealer and Kelly criterion</ref>

to "Kelly Formula: Money Management Key for Traders", which does not support the content of the sentence it was on, offers only brief quotes, of the four quotes sources only one of them (hence is not a reliable source re the rest), and exists to hype the site-owner's you-too-can-beat-the-market courses. Not reliable, and probable spam.
--Jerzy•t 18:05, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Counting details[edit]

This The accompanying article is a bio. I've moved the material in the lead secn on card counting to that article's talk page for evaluation for that article.
--Jerzy•t 19:26 & 21:24, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Your idea makes sense. I agree. Dr.K. λogosπraxis 23:25, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Blacklisted Links Found on Edward O. Thorp[edit]

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Blacklisted Links Found on Edward O. Thorp[edit]

Cyberbot II has detected links on Edward O. Thorp which have been added to the blacklist, either globally or locally. Links tend to be blacklisted because they have a history of being spammed or are highly inappropriate for Wikipedia. The addition will be logged at one of these locations: local or global If you believe the specific link should be exempt from the blacklist, you may request that it is white-listed. Alternatively, you may request that the link is removed from or altered on the blacklist locally or globally. When requesting whitelisting, be sure to supply the link to be whitelisted and wrap the link in nowiki tags. Please do not remove the tag until the issue is resolved. You may set the invisible parameter to "true" whilst requests to white-list are being processed. Should you require any help with this process, please ask at the help desk.

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Source for UC Irvine professorship?[edit]

I'm curious because a number of years ago I actually called the UC Irvine math dept. and asked about Thorp, whoever I spoke to there asserted he had never been a prof. of mathematics there.Docsavage20 (talk) 01:28, 1 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, the irony! He is a founding faculty member of the UC Irvine math department, according to this UCI news article: https://news.uci.edu/feature/blackjack-guru-named-extraordinarius/ --DudeOnTheStreet (talk) 02:51, 1 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting. If correct I wonder what the story was with whoever I talked to - they seemed to be well aware of who I was asking about and were emphatic he had never been a prof. of mathematics there...? Docsavage20 (talk) 08:08, 7 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hm, "if correct"? ;) I take it you are not convinced by the UCI news article? Your continued skepticism on the basis of this phone call with an unidentified authority is quite amusing to me and probably says something about human nature and belief.
I realized a bit after the above exchange that the time Thorpe spent at Irvine is quite well-documented in William Poundstone's book, "Fortune's Formula". It details quite a bit, including the fact that Claude Shannon wrote a recommendation for Thorp's promotion to full professor, and Thorp's work during that time with Sheen T. Kassouf, who also became a full professor at Irvine and co-wrote "Beat the Market" with Thorp.
P.S. I took a 1966 edition of "Beat the Dealer", which he also wrote while at Irvine, off the bookshelf to see if it had a bio of him, and it did. Described him as an associate professor of mathematics at Irvine. It's funny how they keep adjusting his profile over the years... DudeOnTheStreet (talk) 04:50, 12 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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