Books about Counterintuitive from Amazon.com

In Nonplussed!, popular-math writer Julian Havil delighted readers with a mind-boggling array of implausible yet true mathematical paradoxes. Now Havil is back with Impossible?, another marvelous medley of the utterly confusing, profound, and unbelievable--and all of it mathematically irrefutable.

Whenever Forty-second Street in New York is temporarily closed, traffic doesn't gridlock but flows more smoothly--why is that? Or consider that cities that build new roads can experience dramatic increases in traffic congestion--how is this possible? What does the game show Let's Make A Deal reveal about the unexpected hazards of decision-making? What can the game of cricket teach us about the surprising behavior of the law of averages? These are some of the counterintuitive mathematical occurrences that readers encounter in Impossible?

Havil ventures further than ever into territory where intuition can lead one astray. He gathers entertaining problems from probability and statistics along with an eclectic variety of conundrums and puzzlers from other areas of mathematics, including classics of abstract math like the Banach-Tarski paradox. These problems range in difficulty from easy to highly challenging, yet they can be tackled by anyone with a background in calculus. And the fascinating history and personalities associated with many of the problems are included with their mathematical proofs. Impossible? will delight anyone who wants to have their reason thoroughly confounded in the most astonishing and unpredictable ways.

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Price: $14.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Coherence, entanglement, and interference arise from quantum superposition, the most distinctive and puzzling feature of quantum physics. Silverman, whose extensive experimental and theoretical work has helped elucidate these processes, presents a clear and engaging discussion of the role of quantum superposition in diverse quantum phenomena such as the wavelike nature of particle propagation, indistinguishability of identical particles, nonlocal interactions of correlated particles, topological effects of magnetic fields, and chiral asymmetry in nature. He also examines how macroscopic quantum coherence may be able to extricate physics from its most challenging quandary, the collapse of a massive degenerate star to a singularity in space in which the laws of physics break down.

Explained by a physicist with a concern for clarity and experimental achievability, the extraordinary nature of quantum superposition will fascinate the reader not only for its apparent strangeness, but also for its comprehensibility.

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Price: $67.46 [Notify me when price goes down.]

A Chicago reporter suddenly stricken with lupus gives himself the assignment of finding a way back on his feet. After spending nearly two and a half years researching and exactly $4,934.48 on tanning equipment (that’s right, sun tanning equipment), he files this report on a long-ignored, drug-free, non-patentable, counter-intuitive therapy that actually worked – UVA1 Phototherapy..
Price: $14.60 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Why does American business seem to sputter along where it ought to thrive? What is the source of the current plague of downsizing, disappearing companies, dot-com crashes, and here-today-gone-tomorrow advertising campaigns? Why do more products flop than ever before? Marketing experts Kevin J. Clancy and Peter C. Krieg have the answers.

In Counterintuitive Marketing, Clancy and Krieg trace the high rate of business failure back to bad marketing strategy, and the even worse implementation of that strategy. Excess testosterone, they argue, compels senior managers to make decisions intuitively, instinctively, quickly, and, unfortunately, disastrously.

In this informative and enlightening book, Clancy and Krieg confront these "over-and-over-again" marketers, who don't have time to do it right the first time, but endless time and a company bankroll to do it wrong over and over again. The authors draw from their decades of consumer and business-to-business marketing experience to describe the intuitive decision-making practices that permeate business today, and demonstrate how these practices lead to disappointing performance.

Chapter by chapter, Counterintuitive Marketing contrasts how marketing decisions are made today with how they should be made. The authors give equal treatment to targeting, positioning, product development, pricing, customer service, e-commerce, marketing planning, implementation, and more as they present counterintuitive ideas for building and introducing blockbuster marketing programs.

Readers will discover in this iconoclastic treasure chest hundreds of penetrating insights that have enabled the authors' firm, Copernicus, to transform companies and become a "brand guardian" to the Fortune 500 and emerging businesses around the world. The tools to create exceptional marketing programs really do exist, and they are all here in Counterintuitive Marketing, the ultimate practical guide for any company of any size..
Price: $8.64 [Notify me when price goes down.]

From the Foreword by Prof. Benyamin B. Lichtenstein: "You are about to read a book that could change your perspective forever. Books like this are rare, and should be savored Ken Gronbach's book is so compelling, and his writing is so direct, that you'll probably read it in the very first sitting." "Generational marketing is founded on the rise and fall of the size of populations, and their effects on economics, social issues and business -- in whatever geographical confines they may exist. In the United States, generational marketing is particularly pronounced because there is an enormous rise and fall in populations. Huge numbers are preceded by small numbers, and then followed by small numbers. They significantly change things in the economy. They significantly change things in education. They significantly change things in government. They significantly change things in business. And these are all very predictable things. Generational marketing is understanding what's next." -- Kenneth W. Gronbach In any generation, large or small ... "Two percent do the work, two percent cause the trouble, the rest eat the food." -- Kenneth W. Gronbach "You will never see and hear the media the same way again." -- Bill Ford.
Price: $15.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]

Family businesses prosper by pursuing unconventional strategies Because they are values-driven and think very long-term, they take approaches not popular with current management fashion or most companies. That is the key to their competitive advantage. However, family businesses must find ways to simultaneously serve business needs and family goals, which require very different priorities and principles. As a result, they must think paradoxically, and find insights that single-purpose enterprises need not contemplate. They must dare to be different. Family business requires a different governance system, but it must nevertheless be one that can be controlled. Building on insights from the worldâs premier family business executive education course, this book offers the Unconventional Wisdom needed to leverage the strategic and cultural uniqueness of a family business for enduring success..
Price: $8.00 [Notify me when price goes down.]

As financial markets continue to evolve, so do the appetites of investors - both professionals and sophisticated individuals - seeking fresh information and insight. Counterintuitive Investing does not disappoint. Written by widely popular author and lecturer Harlan Platt, this powerful book combines cutting-edge academic investment research with street-smart ideas to improve investment performance. Based on the author’s extensive and thorough research, the book makes a compelling case for stocking up on bargains - stocks with market risk but not company risk. Counterintuitive Investing argues that some company’s stock prices have fallen because of negative news announcements or something not directly related to the essential quality of the company are perfect candidates to buy. While most investors are abandoning the stock, the astute investors buy. The goal is to buy the best of the fallen stocks and avoid the worst, and Platt helps readers determine the difference..
Price: $23.50 [Notify me when price goes down.]

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This digital document is a journal article from Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management, published by Elsevier in 2005. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
Since 1995 we have been collecting quantitative data about the purchasing of IT-products and relations between buyers and IT-suppliers in The Netherlands, together with a team of colleagues. The data include the way in which buyers search and select their supplier, the way in which they negotiate with their chosen supplier, the kind and content of the contracting that is used, the kind and number of management staff involved, the importance of the IT-product or service to the buyer and supplier, the performance of the supplier, and the problems that were eventually encountered. Using our database of transactions in IT-purchasing, we present five empirical findings that we believe to be counterintuitive: (1) though the ability to deal with IT-purchases has increased over the years, the amount of problems experienced has not diminished, (2) the types of problems with IT-transactions that are encountered most, are not the ones managers expect to occur most often, (3) large investments in planning and contracting to prevent problems are not useful, (4) current rules and procedures concerning purchasing management within firms lead to larger management investments, while they do not lead to fewer problems, and (5) although large firms are more bureaucratic and deal with more complex transactions, they are not so different from SMEs as one might think. .
Price: $10.95 [Notify me when price goes down.]