True Odds: How Risk Affects Your Everyday Life. - book reviews

Entrepreneur, June, 1996 by Debra Phillips

Risk. You can't live a life--much less start a business--without taking chances. But how do you ensure the best odds for success?

James Walsh intends to help you pilot your way through the confusion with True Odds: How Risk Affects Your Everyday Life (Merritt Publishing, $19.95 paper). Although you'll undoubtedly be tantalized by information that has nothing to do with business (a real startler: You're more likely to die from daily peanut butter sandwiches than you are from pesticide poisoning!), rest assured there's plenty of grist for the entrepreneurial mill. Particular attention is paid to the so-called "game theory," which, as Walsh explains, is a concept dating back to the 1940s.

"Game theory views business decisions as an evolving series of complex trade-offs," the author writes. "For example, executives have to decide how much of a product to make each year on imperfect information--too many and they'll have to discount prices to sell excess inventory; too few, and they'll miss potential sales."

What are the odds you'll learn something from this book? We're guessing they're pretty good.