A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market by John Allen Paulos (2004, Paperback, Reprint)

To quote my accountant numbers don't lie and in this book the author shows you exaclty what he means. He shows you very specific strategies and methods that you can use to capitalize on the stock market using simple strategies that involve mathematics and predictive probabilities.

While the subject matter of this book is what caught my eye, after a few minutes of reading I could tell it was going to be at best an average book. I found Paulos' writing style a little frenetic. He didn't do a very good job "following through" on the topics he started, and when he did follow through he often glossed over the details or even made mistakes with simple math. I consider this pretty sad from someone who's supposed to be a "brilliant mathematician". For example, a quote from page 40:

"Consider again, the Fibonacci numbers, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 59, ..."

Last time I checked, 21 + 34 was 55, not 59. The series should continue 55, 89, 144, but according to Paulos (both in this part of the book and on other pages where this is referenced) the series is 59, 93, 152, ....

I really wanted to like this book because there aren't a lot of good books that combine the subjects of math and trading, but similar mistakes and inconsistencies throughout make it hard to put any stock in the theories or conclusions Paulos makes.