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| Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets | 
 enlarge | Author: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Publisher: Penguin
Category: Book
Buy New: £6.38
New (6) from £6.38
Avg. Customer Rating:  25 reviews
Sales Rank: 234400
Media: Paperback
Edition: Open Market Ed
Pages: 368
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7 x 4.3 x 0.9
ISBN: 014103274X
EAN: 9780141032740
ASIN: 014103274X
Publication Date: March 29, 2007
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: PLEASE CHECK LANGUAGE OF THIS BOOK IN "PRODUCT DETAILS". BRAND NEW - ***Delivery usually * 3 - 5 * working days - From Aphrohead of SOUTHPORT, UK *** . Thanks from all at Aphrohead.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Masterclass October 5, 2007
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
I've not finished reading this yet, but am impressed by the intelligence and clarity of this book. It clarifies and explains how chance can affect outcomes, and is a great antidote to wishful, lazy or magical thinking. An intellectual but unpretentious read which will reward a slight effort with understanding. Highly recommended.
 Not very readable September 8, 2007
6 out of 14 found this review helpful
Whilst the ideas were thought provoking, the writing style is such that after reading a chapter it was difficult to recall the conclusions. Not user friendly.
 Random thoughts September 5, 2007
11 out of 15 found this review helpful
Some good stuff in here, but I was irritated by the author's display of his own cleverness, and I didn't think the material very well organised. The best bits for me were about how humans are often quite poor in dealing with probability, but if you want a more in depth and enlightening discussion of why this is so from an evolutionary psychology perspective, I recommend Steven Pinker's "How the Mind Works".
An antidote to clueless gurus September 4, 2007
52 out of 53 found this review helpful
I was ambivalent about this book when I picked it up, but was quickly gripped and had to read to the end.
This book is about the Illusion of Control on a massive scale: a refusal to acknowledge blind luck's contribution to our success. Taleb is a trader as well as a scholar, and mixes his logical points with many tales about the "Masters of the Universe": traders who, with a run of successful investment, become rich, promoted and profiled in Fortune magazine. Given the huge numbers of people who become traders, the number of these high-flyers is pretty much what you would expect by chance. The logical conclusion is that there is no evidence that any of these traders have any real skill, or that any of the investment advice given by gurus and journalists has any value. This contrasts with other walks of life where skill and practice are necessary: you couldn't become a concert pianist by blind luck, for example.
Yet the finance industry refuses to acknowledge this. Noise (the natural volatility of the market) is mistaken for signal (understandable and predictable responses to events), and hence pure luck is mistaken for skill. When the hot-shot trader loses all his money, and is escorted from the building by security, it comes as a total surprise to him.
Embarrassingly for his targets, Taleb is not advancing some daring new theory. He just uses probability theory, basic statistics and a knowledge of the psychological research on biases: the toolbox of an informed critical thinker. He shows how professionals in finance, the media and even academia repeatedly fail to use these basic tools: ignoring probabilities, drawing bold conclusions from minuscule evidence, or focusing on probabilities but ignoring values of outcomes
Just as research on bias overlaps research on human happiness, the book also discusses how we can be more happy by exposing ourselves to less information. Far from a whimsical speculation, this is backed up by a clever mathematical/psychological argument.
Taleb's writing style will grate with some people (his favourite topic is clearly himself) but others will find it a very personal and engaging voice. It's an intellectual rather than scholarly book (Taleb mentions a great deal of scientific, philosophical and literary influences, but is not very concerned to back up each claim with citations) but this won't be a problem for most readers.
 Humour and wisdom August 26, 2007
27 out of 28 found this review helpful
I was hesitant about buying this book because I thought it might be a technical book about trading. It isn't. It reminded me of Fred Schwed's, Where are all the customers' yachts? - a humorous look at human folly in the media and the world of investments. There's a little bit of Northcote Parkinson, P J O'Rourke and maybe a little of Montaigne in there, too.
I liked the fact that Taleb recommends not reading newspapers or watching TV news, I like his anti-corporate dandyism, too. He makes a sweeping statement about how self-help books don't work, which I didn't agree with, particularly because I think this book is a rather smart and elegant self-help book written by a very funny guy.
I work as a speechwriter and this book is crammed full of colour that can be recycled for that kind of exercise. If you don't use it for that it will liven up your dinner-party conversation.
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