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The black swan: the impact of the highly improbable
Abstract
Nassim Nicholas Taleb's phenomenal international bestseller The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable shows us how to stop trying to predict everything - and take advantage of uncertainty. What have the invention of the wheel, Pompeii, the Wall Street Crash, Harry Potter and the internet got in common? Why are all forecasters con-artists? What can Catherine the Great's lovers tell us about probability? Why should you never run for a train or read a newspaper? This book is all about Black Swans: the random events that underlie our lives, from bestsellers to world disasters. Their impact is huge; they're impossible to predict; yet after they happen we always try to rationalize them. Taleb is a bouncy and even exhilarating guide...I came to relish what he said, and even develop a sneaking affection for him as a person. (Will Self, Independent on Sunday). He leaps like some superhero of the mind. (Boyd Tonkin, Independent). Funny, quirky and thought-provoking...confirms his status as a guru for every would-be Damien Hirst, George Soros and aspirant despot. (John Cornwell, Sunday Times). Idiosyncratically brilliant. (Niall Ferguson, Sunday Telegraph). Great fun...brash, stubborn, entertaining, opinionated, curious, cajoling. (Stephen J. Dubner, Co-Author of Freakonomics).
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Citations
Cited by
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The impact of Covid-19 pandemic on corporate social responsibility and marketing philosophy
He, H., & Harris, L. (2020) · Journal of Business Research · doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2020.05.030 · Cited by 1,455
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Munos, B. (2009) · Nature Reviews Drug Discovery · doi:10.1038/nrd2961 · Cited by 1,207
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Metadata
- Venue
- Choice Reviews Online
- Publisher
- American Library Association
- Published
- 2007-11-01
- Volume
- 45
- Issue
- 03
- Pages
- 45-1430-45-1430
- ISSN
- 0009-4978 (ISSN-L)
- 1523-8253
- OpenAlex
- W1480526195
- Cited by
- 3,454
- References
- 0
- Type
- book review
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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- The black swan: the impact of the highly improbable. (2007). Choice Reviews Online. https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.45-1430
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
