The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

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Product Details

Author : Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Binding : Hardcover
EAN : 9781400063512
Number of Pages : 400
Product Group : Book
Publication Date : 2007-04-17
Publisher : Random House
Release Date : 2007-04-17

ASIN : 1400063515

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Customer Reviews

The most important events in life cannot be predicted. (2008-05-23)

Taleb's primary thesis is that our lives are governed by black swans, the highly improbable, the circumstances that cannot be foreseen. A turkey will live its life in eager anticipation of the farmer who feeds it. In no way can it anticipate the day the farmer will decide to serve it for Thanksgiving dinner. Most of the world did not expect 9/11 or the impact it would have on their lives. J.R. Rowling could not have predicted the phenomenal success of her Harry Potter series. Mr. Taleb differentiates between those parts of our lives that are governed by mediocristan and those by extremistan. Mediocristan are those parts of our existence that fit a bell curve like who well we do on a test or our size relative to others or the time it takes to run a quarter mile compared to others. Variations from one person to another are limited by intelligence and physicality. Our income relative to others is governed by the laws of extremistan. It is not limited by any practical element. Knowing the income of one person gives no clue as the relative income of another if we take the example of me and Bill Gates or the average income of any 10,000 people if Bill Gates is included in that number. Mr. Taleb definitely provides another perspective on the world. One that's definitely worth reading.

Improve your odds (2008-04-13)

As an investor you are always looking to have an edge. This book opens your mine to mistakes in the stockmarket in value investing and risk vs reward of smaller stocks that proprotionately favour the Black Swan effect. Provocative yet should be profitable to ones portfolio!!

Living Betwix and Between (2008-02-24)

Most of us are content to live within the parameters of what we think we know about our environment. Our safety zone is found between what we know for certain and what we can never be quite sure of. Into this midst Taleb drops a bombshell in the form of the Black Swan, a coined term describing the element of the highly unlikely or improbable. It is this less than two-percent chance of the unexpected that requires the individual to be skillful anticipating possible success or failure. As humans we live between either too narrow an existence where are no risks, hence no rewards, and a too wide-open domain, where risks are the order of the day. Taleb's book offers a lot of commonsensical tips on how to manage the zone that exists between these two popular extremes of all or nothing. Some of them involve understanding statistical odds, randomness, diversification, and volatility; all of these contain the potential for being deadly Black Swans. What I found especially helpful in the book was Taleb's way of backing up all his philosophical observationsand arguments with evidence from the scientific world. For him, it all comes down to the fact that in order to be successful we must able to manage the area of uncertainty in our lives by developing plans that allow for latitude and flexibility. In a nutshell that means attacking the unknown by intelligently and prudently enlarging our boundaries so that it doesn't close in on us and choke of our very existence.

Disappointing (2008-02-04)

This book is about 300 pages too long. Read the first 5 pages, and skip the rest. The author has a very high opinion of himself.

Terrible book by crackpot author. (2008-01-29)

This was a terrible book and I really struggled to finish it. The most disappointing thing was that it looked so promising and I was really excited to read it; I was let down.I've read a lot of financial books and this one tops the list for least amount of useful information and fails to divulge a single investing strategy. N.N.T essentially rambles on for 305 pages about how you can't predict the unpredictable (which is true by sheer definition, yet Nassim manages to ramble on for 17 or so more chapters), and that he hates statisticians, bell-curves, mathematicians, physicists, central banks, financial analysts, Nobel prize winners, and pretty much everyone. It's Nassim versus everyone in Acadamia and the "real-world" but with no concrete arguments, just sarcastic snide comments. Ok Nassim, I get it, we cannot predict and you hate everyone; get on with it.Did I mention Nassim likes to make up words? He blabbers on about Extremistan and Mediocrestan, and a couple other nonsense names for idea's he "made up" (eg. Ludic Fallacy). I don't know if Nassim is trying to simplify his ideas or what, but I found him to be a crackpot.This book reads more like a philosophy book, but without the connecting logic. "The Black Swan" is more of an Ugly Duckling, and it grows up to be an Ugly Lame Duck.

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