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The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
 
 
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The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable [Kindle Edition]

Nassim Nicholas Taleb (Author)
3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (195 customer reviews)
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Review

'A deeply intelligent, provocative book ... Taleb succeeds in
bringing sceptical empiricism to the masses' -- The Economist

'A fascinating study of how we are regularly taken for suckers by the unexpected' -- Larry Elliot, Guardian

'A provocative macro-trend tome in the tradition of The Wisdom of
Crowds and The Tipping Point' -- Time

'A richly enjoyable read with an important message' -- BusinessWeek

'An idiosyncratically brilliant new book' -- Niall Ferguson, Sunday Telegraph

'An idiosyncratically brilliant new book'
-- Niall Ferguson, Sunday Telegraph

'Like the conversation of raconteur ... hugely enjoyable - compelling ... Beware the Black Swan' -- John Kay, Financial Times

'Mindblowing ... A masterpiece' -- Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of Wired and author of The Long Tail

'Taleb's book deserves our attention, and our thanks' -- International Herald Tribune

'The Black Swan confirms his status as a guru for every would-be Damien Hirst, George Soros and aspirant despot' -- John Cornwell, Sunday Times

Niall Ferguson, Sunday Telegraph

'An idiosyncratically brilliant new book'
See all Product Description

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
495 of 524 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars right, interesting, but extremely irritating 28 Nov 2007
By Dean Swift
Format:Hardcover
Taleb has one good idea, a great idea even, and an infinite number of ways of talking about it. It is essentially the same idea as his last book, Fooled by Randomness: namely that life does not behave with regularity. Those who think it does, he says, will always be tripped up by the unexpected. Black Swan extends that idea, beyond the financial markets he concentrated on in Randomness, to just about all walks of life. He is a magpie for anecdote and stray pieces of supporting evidence wherever he can find them. He calls all this 'skeptical empiricism'.
The qualification is that his big idea is not original, though his numerous examples do help bring home its ubiquity. More problematically, he overstates its usefulness. For when it comes to calling your next move, the unpredictable and the unexpected are, by definition, not things we can anticipate. And though he is right that in the long run there will undoubtedly by high impact improbably events, it is also true, as Keynes said, that in the long run we are all dead: organising your life on the principle that something radical might come along doesn't solve the everyday problem of what to next.
In short, he exaggerates his own insight and the authority it gives him. That's a wicked irony, for the chief target of his ire is those with an exaggerated sense of insight and control over their lives.
Oh, and the tone... Taleb wants to be seen as a radical iconoclast. Every sentence drips righteousness and often irritation. He is the strutting, impatient sage, the rest of us blinkered morons. Apparently he doesn't like his editors trying to change this. A word of advice to the author: if you want your advice heeded, don't shout and sneer at your audience. For this reason, an interesting thesis, but in the end a wearisome read.
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176 of 186 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars In a nutshell: insightful but rambling 19 Jun 2009
By A. Schaffer
Format:Paperback
There are many reviews here already, so I'll keep this short:

- Content: makes insightful points on limitations of our knowledge, human temptation to identify false trends and narratives, follow herd mentality, blindly follow 'experts', and so forth. He calls this 'skeptical empiricism'.

- Style: long-winded and rambling, skipping from personal stories from Lebanon, to parables intended to represent the author, to dull discussions on history of mathematics. I didn't mind it, but some readers hate it.

- Author: massively arrogant and up himself. Thinks he's had the best idea since sliced bread. He's got a good idea, but he's not the first or the only one, just the one with the biggest mouth.

- Other reads: there are better books out there on similar subjects. John Kay (of the FT) writes essays from a similar position, much more concisely and more to the point.

Hope that helps!
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars No empirical evidence presented 26 Aug 2011
By J. Sharpe
Format:Paperback
This is an interesting read and likely worth it. The main point is there are a lot of people in finance who have no clue about statistics.

One of the key points is that many financial markets follow power law distributions. I was disappointed to see that no empirical evidence is presented to support this. So I tested it myself. 108 years data of equity returns in 5 countries (the DMS data set). There is no evidence to suggest annual equity returns follow a power law distribution. A much better fit is achieved with exponential.

Best to check oneself; free data is available from yahoo; R statistics program is free online; the fExtremes packages quickly tests if data follows a power law distribution.

Very disappointing and left me suspecting the other unsupported arguments in the book are similarly flawed.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful book
I'm reviewing the hard copy book. I ordered and paid for it on Kindle but it never arrived!

The book is written with wit and insight, is enlightening and stimulating. Read more
Published 25 days ago by R. RESTALL
1.0 out of 5 stars Poorly written, patronising, piffle
I am not as qualified as some other reviewers to judge the mathematical merits of the author's arguments but I do know, when I see it:

1. Overt plagiarism
2. Read more
Published 27 days ago by Chippy_D
3.0 out of 5 stars Good, but missing something
A very good read, undoubtedly and the concept of the black swan is invaluable. The authors personal anecdotes and philosophy are probably the main interests here though, for... Read more
Published 1 month ago by anthony j morgan
5.0 out of 5 stars A salutary reminder of our intellectual faults.
Every once in a while we must be reminded of our own shortcomings so that we can retain some measure of reality. The Black Swan is very good at this last. Read more
Published 1 month ago by M. A. R. GONZALEZ
3.0 out of 5 stars It's Okay
It is Okay.
A bit too long and chewing same topic all over the place. Woudl make it shorter. Interesting point of view with some great topic for consideration. Read more
Published 1 month ago by alex petkov
1.0 out of 5 stars An important topic spoilt by a bad book
I had high hopes for this book. How best to deal with uncertainty is an intellectually challenging and interesting question with major implications for our daily lives. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Jan W. H. Schnupp
5.0 out of 5 stars A totally unexpected book
Simply one of the best non-fiction books I have ever read. I would have never guessed from the title or synopsis quite what to expect. Read more
Published 3 months ago by William Caola
3.0 out of 5 stars Good ideas, but a bit arrogant
A good read and an interesting perspective on statistics. However, the personal commentary and the bashing of almost all conventional statistics and economics undermines the sound... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Alex
4.0 out of 5 stars An interesting perspective on risk
I'm surprised that there are so many negative reviews for this book, I was expecting more positive reviews but they appear to be fairly evenly distributed over the ratings. Read more
Published 3 months ago by Edward A. Thomson
3.0 out of 5 stars Not all that bad
Everybody knows this is a lazy sequel to a succesful book.

But I never read Fooled by Randomness, and I hold a couple math degrees, and I even once took a class from a... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Athan
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