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The Black Swan
  • Published: 2 June 2008
  • ISBN: 9780141906201
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 480

The Black Swan

The Impact of the Highly Improbable



From the critically acclaimed author of Fooled by Randomness, a book about the impact of improbable events on every aspect of life

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. A rallying cry to ignore the 'experts', The Black Swan shows us how to stop trying to predict everything - and take advantage of uncertainty.

  • Published: 2 June 2008
  • ISBN: 9780141906201
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 480

About the author

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Nassim Nicholas Taleb has devoted his life to immersing himself in problems of luck, uncertainty, probability and knowledge. Part literary essayist, part empiricist, part no-nonsense mathematical trader, he is currently Dean's Professor in the Science of Uncertainty at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. His last book, the bestseller Fooled by Randomness, has been published in eighteen languages and was selected by Fortune magazine as one of "The Smartest Books of All Time". Taleb lives mostly in New York.

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