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| The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable | 
 enlarge | Author: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Category: Book
List Price: £8.99
Buy New: £3.61
You Save: £5.38 (60%)
New (21) from £3.61
Avg. Customer Rating:  36 reviews
Sales Rank: 54
Media: Paperback
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5 x 1
ISBN: 0141034599
EAN: 9780141034591
ASIN: 0141034599
Publication Date: February 28, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: BRAND NEW - ***Delivery usually * 2 - 3 * working days - From Aphrohead of SOUTHPORT, Lancs, UK *** . Priority Airmail used Worldwide on International orders. Thanks from all at Aphrohead.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Read it! September 13, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
Black Swan is a book about the unpredictable and the folly of trying to predict it. That it has found a market in these volatile, credit-crunched times is not surprising. If, eighteen months ago, you had predicted that the international banking system would be heading for meltdown within a year, your friends would have laughed before returning to their spreadsheets and hyperactive blackberries. Today, anything - up to and including the second coming - goes.
Black Swan is simultaneously enjoyable - it is well and humourously written - and uncomfortable. The central premise is that all the suits out there within the accounting and other financial disciplines are hopelessly trapped in a world that creates around it an illusion of stability. Whether you are predicting growth that is slow, rapid or negative is irrelevant because the biggest impact will always come from factors that are exogenous to your model. You know a lot, but it's all pretty useless when you come up against the Black Swan of the title.
This is uncomfortable because, if you extrapolate the line of thought, there is probably not much point in doing anything. CEOs who swallow the Black Swan theory, will spend more time on the golf course. We'll all stop reading magazines and newspapers (and maybe even follow-up books to the Black Swan), whilst we await the next tsunami. It's not a book that you want to give your son or daughter, just graduating from university and seeking to impress a potential employer in Canary Wharf. ("Just what we need - a nihilist philosopher!"). But it is definitely worth reading, especially if you're one of those people who remarks at the bar "I have never seen anything like this before".
In my own opinion, the Black Swans currently muddying up the lake only turned black quite recently - like monsters in an old-fashioned horror flick - and they have their origins in the accounting world. Mark to market accounting, off-balance sheet accounting, pension fund accounting, all introduced in balmier economic climates, were all well-intentioned. Like everything emanating from the bodies that make these rules, no-one notices them until the flames started lapping up the walls. In retrospect, they have acted like accelerants in a firebomb. If you're marking to market and the market collapses, you're dead. When the market recovers, you'll still be dead. Did anyone test the accounting standards against the sort of market conditions we're experiencing now? My guess is probably not.
 Like what he says, but not how he says it September 3, 2008
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
I think the reviews here probably sum this book up quite well. There is a realtively simple, and as far as I can see, valid point being made, but the book is written in a long-winded, verbose style, which I found very off-putting. I agree with the reviewers who point out that the strongest message to emerge is that the author considers himself to be very, very clever.
For instance, there is a lot of space devoted to discussion of the bell-shaped curve, or normal distribution, which forms the basis for many types of statistics. Some variables, such as height and weight are normally distributed. However, other variables, such as personal wealth, and many things related to economics, have a very skewed distribution, hence sayings like the 80/20 rule. Even the most basic course in statistics will tell you that assuming scores are normally distributed, when they are not, will give you misleading and incorrect results. NNT tells you that here also, but does so by using an analogy of lands called Mediocristan (the normal distribution) and Extremistan (non-normal distribution). Why make up terms for something where perfectly adequate terminology already exists? I do not take issue with what he had to say, but I do think there is a much more simple, and clear, way of saying it.
Consequently, I ended up skimming through a great deal of this book because it was taking far too long to get to the point, and a constant feeling of irritation seriously hindered my reading pleasure.
 Difficult finding the gold in the dust September 1, 2008
3 out of 5 found this review helpful
This book is written by a proud sceptic, who challenges all our assumptions about systems and beliefs in modern science and particularly economics. The author worked in large financial firms, and saw the downfall of current beliefs.
He argues strenuously for people to avoid believing in the charlatans, and demonstrates numerous failings of the systems. But he fails to offer a better way so, despite his displayed intellect and thinking prowess, he comes across as a whiner. This is unfortunate, as I warmed to his message, but I found myself constantly waiting for the great revelation of how things could be run better. It never really appeared.
A very important book August 25, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is one of the most enjoyable and interesting books I have ever read. I have now read it about 20 times but keep finding something new every time I read it. I have also noticed that now after the credit crunch everything he says has additional meaning though the book itself was written before the credit crunch. I have even noticed politicians and central bankers start talking a bit like he does. We don't know what we don't know and we can only be as prepared as possible or pick up the pieces as well as we can after the fallout. A good book to pair with this is The Wisdom of the Crowd. It covers the stuff not covered in this book and this book covers the stuff not covered in that book.
 Good stuff! August 13, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is a very good book. It is thought provoking and works well as a new way of looking at the randomness in the world. A lot of people here have criticized Taleb for displaying a massive ego, and putting forward things that they dont agree with. Indeed, he is very opinionated and forward and I also disagree with some of the things he says (comments about the uncertainty principle mainly) BUT it is much more entertaining to read this way. Ultimately who wants to read a book that just confirms what they thought was true already? You read a book to challenge yourself, and your preconceptions about the world. This book does that. Just thinking about the extreme stuff helps give an insight into how some people see the world, and even if you dont agree, surely it is interesting to find out about?
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