Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb ~ Books I Like

Thursday, May 14, 2009

Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book Fooled-by-Randomness takes a deeper look at financial luck. In this book Hedge fund manager Taleb (Dynamic Hedging) addresses the apparently irrational movement of money markets around the world. Using his own investing experience and examples of others' successes and disappointments, he discusses theories like Monte Carlo math (easy; considered cheating by purists) and the concept of Russian roulette. Taleb tells interesting, well-wrought stories about individual behavior: "While Nero has succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, both personally and intellectually, he is starting to consider himself as having missed a chance somewhere."

The primary conjecture of Fooled-by-Randomness is that human beings are psychologically prone to misinterpret random events. We need to explain things, whether it be in the social sciences, art and literature, or the natural sciences, so we find ways to explain them. Considering the infinite quantities of data at our disposal, no statistician denies that extremely powerful correlations will occur simply out of chance. Nassim's other famous book is the black swan.

No comments:

Post a Comment