Location: Home » Other Books » Management » The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

The Oenophile Network Blog & Forum Links

Wine Blog
Wine Forum

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

enlarge

Author: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Publisher: Random House
Category: Book

List Price: ~~$27.00~~
Buy New: $15.49
You Save: $11.51 (43%)

New (47) Used (18) Collectible (3) from $15.49

Avg. Customer Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

362 reviews
Sales Rank: 108

Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.4 x 6.5 x 1.4

ISBN: 1400063515
Dewey Decimal Number: 003.54
EAN: 9781400063512
ASIN: 1400063515

Publication Date: April 17, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days

Customer Reviews:

Showing reviews 6-10 of 362

« PREV

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

... 73 NEXT »

Connecting esoteric dudes to your life .... November 24, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful

Nassim Taleb has connected mathematics and real life. Imagine an aspiring politician who predicts that her policies will create one million jobs, or the incumbent politician who reads his tea leaves and announces that his policies have created two million new jobs. You, like me, have probably wondered: "In such a big and complicated world, how do they know the impact of their actions with such singular clarity and certainty, and how also do they know the future so precisely and with such certainty?" Well, it turns out that they don't know. Or worse, they actually think they know - but they really don't know. Taleb tells you specifically how to discern when (and why) experts (and our own thinking) goes wrong. He explores how we think, learn, and reason. In doing so he fills a hug gap in today's public consciousness.

You could easily rename this book "how not to be taken for an intellectual chump by society's big thinkers". While avoiding that chump-fate you come to appreciate Benoit Mandelbrot, Karl Raimond Popper, and Fredrieck Hayak' and you are provided reasons to be skeptical of Carl Freidrick Guass (and the bell curve). Taleb connects these esoteric dudes to your life and to the "opportunities" presented to you in living it. This book is ultimately an essay about mathematical empiricism, philosophy, reason, risk, uncertainty, and real life. But what makes it a great read is that Taleb's writing makes you smile. He actually takes the time to "dis" entire professions (if not individual professionals and intellectuals) on the grounds of intellectual merit. His attitude makes it more fun.

Read this book (twice) if you want to more deeply consider the big challenges of the world (and if you actually want a modest shot at doing the right thing in response to them).

5 out of 5 stars

The Black Swan November 23, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful

An excellent read during this time of troubled economics. A challenge to those who rely completely on statistical significance in all aspects of life. Thought provoking.

4 out of 5 stars

Intriguing and easy to read November 23, 2008
2 out of 5 found this review helpful

Enjoyed Black Swan. It was an easy read and addressed some interesting high concepts around probability theory. The math toward the end of the book likely sent a few things over my head, but I didn't feel anything was purposefully pedantic. As for the main premise, I am not quite sure that today is more extremistan than yesterday - notwithstanding current dysfunction in the capital markets. I do think our expectations for normalcy have been heightened given our current propensity for risk (or lack thereof). So stuff feels much more extreme.

2 out of 5 stars

A magnificent philosophy ruined by a premature compilation November 23, 2008
4 out of 5 found this review helpful

First of all, I must say I agree with most of Taleb's philosophy. The book shows the deep understanding of the human epistemology and the overlapping fields, and a certainly proper way to see the uncertain. However, everything is over at this point. His philosophical thoughts could be condensed in a fraction of the book, and Taleb could spare us a lot of digressions, pointless cultural references and dull stories. In addition, the writing style is hard to follow, somewhat boring and bombastic, and not necessarily cultured, and it displays a (maybe exaggeratedly) notorious cockiness. Mandelbrot's popular works (being him one of Taleb's heroes) state many of these ideas, proving other people wrong (or going against them), without being so insulting.

The impression I had, while and after reading the book, is that Taleb's intention (or desire), maybe hidden and unconscious, was aimed at writing a compendium of his thoughts, much like the work of all these philosophers he tells us about through the book (Popper, Hayek, Huet, Montaigne...), capitalizing on his previous best-seller and his reputation as a leading quant-finance professional. But he fails, giving too many distant stories and a lack of structure that does not match the depth of his philosophy. The book ends up being a narration, precisely one of the things the author warns us against (a fact already noted in the preface).

In conclusion, a badly conveyed but great philosophy.

2 out of 5 stars

Incoherent and slightly mad - but interesting November 20, 2008
4 out of 5 found this review helpful

Taleb wants to tell us about 'Black Swans' - highly improbable events that have a disproportionate impact - and the subject couldn't be more timely, in light of the global financial crisis, and especially in view of his (2006) comments on the precarious state of Fannie Mae. He makes the point that much statistical theory (and certainly economic modeling) assumes normally-distributed data, whereas the real world ("Extremistan" in his parlance) contains significant outlier events that can create havoc with models - and, as we have seen, with shareholder value.

Another bonus is that he is widely-read, widely-traveled, and eclectic in his sources. So he should be worth listening to. Unfortunately, he spends most of the book telling us about himself, and in particular how only he and a select few academics (Benoit Mandelbrot comes in for particular praise) really 'get it' as far as probability is concerned. He is a self-described 'erudite' whose exotic background (Lebanese Greek Orthodox, with several languages) gives him special insight that more pedestrian practitioners lack. Taleb spends much of the book reiterating how fraudulent, foolish or ignorant most economists, mathematicians and philosophers are; and how 'NNT' - as he prefers to call himself - has, through his empirical work as an options trader and his wide reading, achieved insights that the Nobel laureates have missed. (Nobel laureates are especially scorned.)

Apart from the self-aggrandizing and repetitive nature of his prose, the book's main failings are that Taleb tries but does not succeed in making the case that stock-market returns are fractal in nature (sorry, Dr Mandelbrot - this was discredited some time ago), and he offers virtually no useful advice on the central problem he raises. That is, given that Black Swans are so far outside our normal experience that they cannot be readily modeled or predicted, how should be prepare ourselves for the worst (or the best)? Taleb's answer: think outside the box, pursue potentially 'good' Swans, and hedge against bad ones. Oh, and 'don't be a sucker'.

I was - I paid money for his book.

Powered by Associate-O-Matic

Customer Service

Contact Customer Service
Ordering
Tracking Your Package
Shipping Information
Domestic Shipping Rates
International Shipping Rates
Returns
Gifts & Gift Certificates
Privacy & Security

Subcategories

•	Artificial Intelligence
•	Circuitry
•	General
•	General AAS
•	Human-Computer Interaction
•	Information Theory
•	Modeling & Simulation
•	Research
•	Software Engineering
•	Systems Analysis & Design

Untitled Document Disclaimer: This is an Amazon storefront - the products referenced on this site are manufactured and sold by parties other than the Oenophile Network. The Oenophile Network makes no representations regarding either the products or any information vendors offer about their products. Any questions, complaints, or claims regarding the products must be directed to the appropriate manufacturer or vendor, or to Amazon.com.