Customer Reviews

The Two Headed Quarter: How to See Through Deceptive Numbers and Save Money on Everything You Buy

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Those whose goal is to persuade us to buy their products have many weapons in their arsena like misdirection, exaggeration, glittering generalities, false claims, attractive packaging, subliminal suggestions, sex, and a creative and liberal use of numbers.

According to its cover, "The Two-Headed Quarter" is about " how to see through deceptive numbers and save money on everything you buy." Based on this blurb and more teasers on the back, I assumed this book would be mostly about the mathematical shenanigans of sellers, lenders, banks, insurance companies, and credit card companies.

The book is structured in four parts with the first part called Daily Deceptions. Although the author takes the scenic route in this chapter, he mostly sticks to the topic of deceptive numbers and how to see beyond them, with the tricks used by credit card companies and card sellers of most interest. The other three sections (Income, Loans, and Misunderstood Math) contain lots of good advice for the mathematically naïve but only a smattering on the subject in which I was interested and much more digression on mathematical explanations and charts than I needed.

"Two-Headed Quarter" is mostly absent the scientific jargon that makes me dizzy until the last chapter with talk of exponents, speeds, hydrogen atom diameters, mass, weight and scientific notation.

I think this book is best suited for young readers just beginning to experience the labyrinths of investing, borrowing, retirement planning, and mortgages. For someone like myself who mostly pays cash for things, including cars, half the book goes down well- traveled roads imparting information long ago learned.

My favorite part of the book, besides examples of tricky use of percents, is the section showing how the same information can be represented differently on charts depending on the agenda and motive of the presenter. Fascinating stuff.

Physics teacher Joseph Ganem applies his mathematical expertise to the realm of money and finance in The Two-Headed Quarter: How to See Through Deceptive Numbers and Save Money on Everything You Buy, a no-nonsense guide to the technically legal yet inordinately deceptive practices of modern advertising: "low, low monthly payments", "zero percent interest", and many more offers too good to be true "only if you buy today!" Chapters cover how to apply reasonable estimations in one's approach to financial planning, the mathematics of income growth and investing, how to carefully evaluate loans, and much more. Though mathematically astute, The Two-Headed Quarter is written to be thoroughly accessible to lay people and is very strongly recommended for readers of all economic and financial backgrounds.

Every consumer should read this book. In fact, it should be mandatory reading in every high school consumer ed class. It spells out like nothing I've seen the many ways that marketing "spins" bad deals into good-sounding ones. Before you buy anything with financing, especially, including buying a house with a mortgage, read this book for how to sort out the deals. It will save you tons of money. After all, no one wants to be taken to the cleaners, and when you can so easily gain the upper hand in evaluating offers and negotiating terms of your purchase, there really is no reason to be. You can also learn stuff that will make mutual fund prospectuses more understandable. This book will also help those of you wanting to get even better returns on your retirement funds and other savings by investing in individual stocks and other investments. The discussion about short selling of stocks was particularly illuminating, which is impressive given the complexity of the subject. And in the process of learning how to do that, you'll have lots of fun with the author's stories and insights into how numbers are used and abused in our political debates. A must read for everyone!

The Two-Headed Quarter opened my eyes to deceptive practices that should have been so clear. The book will help you avoid the mistakes so many of us made throughout our financial lives.

Why, for example, do real estate agents take you to houses that are outside your specified range? Were they listening? The answer is, "yes, they were." They also know that you will compare all other house values to the first few prices you saw. See "anchoring" in Ganem's book.

We are potential victims of people who use well-researched, scientific theories about human nature. Why not arm yourself with mathematical models that will even the playing field? Consider it a wise investment.

I found this book to be very helpful and interesting and unlike one of the other reviewers I actually read the whole book and not just some excerpts. This book is for the average hard-working person, who does not really understand all the fine print in Rent to Own contracts, Credit Card advances, Car Loans, Mortgage interest etc. This book is not for people who already have extensive knowledge of finances (they don't need this information). I might add there are a lot of people who don't know anything about how the world works. I work in a construction company and I have helped many of our field employees (who are very intelligent when it comes to physically building a structure-something that I could never do)but who make very bad financial decisions because they just don't understand all the fine print in the consumer contracts that they sign. This book will be perfect for them. This book is easy to read and the real life examples are very helpful for the average person. I also found the section on making sense of the numbers that politicians and the media use to communicate with the public very interesting.

Want to know how to avoid being ripped off or tricked by deceptive claims? Buy this book, read it and pull it down from the shelf to review relevent sections before you borrow money or make large purchases. Helpful and humorous, with some tables that I found helpful.

My whole family enjoyed reading and discussing this book. The author makes mathematics very understandable. He provides fascinating insights on how numbers can be used to manipulate perceptions of reality. A must read.

I was considering the purchase of this book so I used the "search inside" to try and find out whether it would be worth my time reading it. In the "read an excerpt" the author described how he and his wife had gone to a wholesale club to receive a "free" gift. People who know anything about how the world works would not do this. Someone should have mentioned to the author that there are no free lunches. So that was a bad start. Then I used the "surprise me" and read the following "Take baccarat for example. For every dollar bet the casino wins on average $1.0136 if the bet is on the player and $1.0117 if the bet is on the banker." Obviously the casino cannot win MORE than you bet. He meant $.0136 and $.0117 but it shows imprecise thinking and sloppy editing. The reason I was aware of this book was because amazon sent me an email about it because I had bought "Fooled by Randomness" and "The Black Swan" by Nassim Taleb, two books I would hardily recommend. Possibly after this review we may not get the search inside feature on as many new books which would be a shame. I reluctantly wrote this review because I have greatly benefited from reviews I have read by other amazon customers.

Amazon told me I should have a look at this one because I liked Freakonomics, which is indeed a highly entertaining book - also because of the interesting socio-economics issues and the sometimes unexpected slant to them. In the first chapter of The Two Headed Quarter there is nothing unexpected - yes, pyramid games, lack of transparancy and number confusion - they all do exist. But where is the fresh perspective?