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List Price: $28.00Amazon.com's Price: $18.48 You Save: $9.52 (34%)as of 02/09/2010 00:33 EST
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 003.54
EAN: 9781400063512
Edition: 1
ISBN: 1400063515
Label: Random House
Manufacturer: Random House
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 366
Publication Date: April 17, 2007
Publisher: Random House
Release Date: April 17, 2007
Studio: Random House
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Editorial Review:
Amazon.com Review:
Bestselling author Nassim Nicholas Taleb continues his exploration of randomness in his fascinating new book, The Black Swan, in which he examines the influence of highly improbable and unpredictable events that have massive impact. Engaging and enlightening, The Black Swan is a book that may change the way you think about the world, a book that Chris Anderson calls, "a delightful romp through history, economics, and the frailties of human nature." See Anderson's entire guest review below.
Guest Reviewer: Chris Anderson
 Chris Anderson is editor-in-chief of Wired magazine and the author of The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More.
Four hundred years ago, Francis Bacon warned that our minds are wired to deceive us. "Beware the fallacies into which undisciplined thinkers most easily fall--they are the real distorting prisms of human nature." Chief among them: "Assuming more order than exists in chaotic nature." Now consider the typical stock market report: "Today investors bid shares down out of concern over Iranian oil production." Sigh. We're still doing it.
Our brains are wired for narrative, not statistical uncertainty. And so we tell ourselves simple stories to explain complex thing we don't--and, most importantly, can't--know. The truth is that we have no idea why stock markets go up or down on any given day, and whatever reason we give is sure to be grossly simplified, if not flat out wrong.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb first made this argument in Fooled by Randomness, an engaging look at the history and reasons for our predilection for self-deception when it comes to statistics. Now, in The Black Swan: the Impact of the Highly Improbable, he focuses on that most dismal of sciences, predicting the future. Forecasting is not just at the heart of Wall Street, but itÂ’s something each of us does every time we make an insurance payment or strap on a seat belt.
The problem, Nassim explains, is that we place too much weight on the odds that past events will repeat (diligently trying to follow the path of the "millionaire next door," when unrepeatable chance is a better explanation). Instead, the really important events are rare and unpredictable. He calls them Black Swans, which is a reference to a 17th century philosophical thought experiment. In Europe all anyone had ever seen were white swans; indeed, "all swans are white" had long been used as the standard example of a scientific truth. So what was the chance of seeing a black one? Impossible to calculate, or at least they were until 1697, when explorers found Cygnus atratus in Australia.
Nassim argues that most of the really big events in our world are rare and unpredictable, and thus trying to extract generalizable stories to explain them may be emotionally satisfying, but it's practically useless. September 11th is one such example, and stock market crashes are another. Or, as he puts it, "History does not crawl, it jumps." Our assumptions grow out of the bell-curve predictability of what he calls "Mediocristan," while our world is really shaped by the wild powerlaw swings of "Extremistan."
In full disclosure, I'm a long admirer of Taleb's work and a few of my comments on drafts found their way into the book. I, too, look at the world through the powerlaw lens, and I too find that it reveals how many of our assumptions are wrong. But Taleb takes this to a new level with a delightful romp through history, economics, and the frailties of human nature. --Chris Anderson
Product Description:
A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11. For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives.
Why do we not acknowledge the phenomenon of black swans until after they occur? Part of the answer, according to Taleb, is that humans are hardwired to learn specifics when they should be focused on generalities. We concentrate on things we already know and time and time again fail to take into consideration what we don’t know. We are, therefore, unable to truly estimate opportunities, too vulnerable to the impulse to simplify, narrate, and categorize, and not open enough to rewarding those who can imagine the “impossible.”
For years, Taleb has studied how we fool ourselves into thinking we know more than we actually do. We restrict our thinking to the irrelevant and inconsequential, while large events continue to surprise us and shape our world. Now, in this revelatory book, Taleb explains everything we know about what we don’t know. He offers surprisingly simple tricks for dealing with black swans and benefiting from them.
Elegant, startling, and universal in its applications The Black Swan will change the way you look at the world. Taleb is a vastly entertaining writer, with wit, irreverence, and unusual stories to tell. He has a polymathic command of subjects ranging from cognitive science to business to probability theory. The Black Swan is a landmark book–itself a black swan.
*2nd Edition, With a new essay: "On Robustness and Fragility"
Average Rating: 
Rating:  -
The author clearly loves to hear himself talk because he's filled up this book with a great many unnecessary pages and stories that just feel misplaced. There are a couple of meaningful chapters, but very few (15-17). It's also annoying that throughout he ties everything to luck. Overall, a disappointing read.
Rating:  -
I won't dignify this idiotic book with a thorough review. Read a total of 100 pages, and I'm exhausted. If you like hearing others pontificate on why they're smarter than you, this is a real treat. I can't add anything to what others who have rated this book likewise have already said.
Rating:  -
Before the banking crisis and stock market meltdown, the author came close to supporting the extreme view of quality guru Dr. Deming, that the most important things are "unknown and unknowable". Instead, he says that we average humans, the learned class and even the PhD quants on Wall Street, really have no good way of estimating, describing or evaluating extreme events that do not fit within the 95% limit of the typical bell curve. The biggest impact comes through breakthroughs, catastrophes or ... Read More
Rating:  -
The prologue is a punch in the nose:: straight to the point. The rest of the book, despite its assertiveness, falls back to a more leisure pace. There is a lot of biographical reference and I agree with the reviewer that wrote that the author thinks very highly of himself.
The thesis is a controversial one:: In search of understanding on the workings of the world, scholars and curious people alike should screen out common occurrences and focus on outliers or "Black Swans".
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Rating: -
absolutely one of the best books abouts risks and risk management ever written. A must for anyone who truly wants to know what is going on in the economy
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