The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

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Penguin Books, Limited, 2007 - Computers - 366 pages
Elegant, startling, and universal in its applications, The Black Swan is a concept that will change the way you look at the world. Black Swans underlie almost everything, from the rise of religions, to events in our own personal lives. A Black Swan is a highly improbable event with three principle 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. And why do we always ignore the phenomenon of Black Swans until after they occur? As Nassim Nicholas Taleb reveals, we are hard-wired not to truly estimate risk, too vulnerable to the impulse to simplify, narrate, and categorize and not open enough to rewarding those who can imagine the 'impossible'. In this revelatory book, Taleb explains everything we know about what we don''t know, and shows us how to face the world.

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About the author (2007)

Nassim Nicholas Taleb was born in 1960 in Amioun, Lebanon. He is a researcher, essayist, trader, epistemologist, and former practitioner of mathematical finance. Taleb received his bachelors and masters degree in science from the University of Paris. He holds an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and a Ph.D. in Management Science from the University of Paris- Dauphine. Taleb began his financial mathematics career in several of New York City's Wall Street firms before becoming a scholar in the epistemology of chance events, randomness, and the unknown. Taleb's book, Fooled by Randomness, was translated into 23 languages. His book, The Black Swan, was translated into 27 languages and spent several months on the New York Times Bestseller list. Taleb is a Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at Polytechnic Institute of New York University and visiting professor of Marketing (Cognitive Science) at London Business School. Taleb has also taught at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, Courant Institute of New York University, and the Wharton Business School Financial Institutions Center. His title Bed of Procrustes made the N.Y. Times Bestseller List for 2010 and his title Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder made The 2012 New York Times Bestseller List.

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