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The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by: Nassim Nicholas Taleb List Price: £8.99 City Travel Guides Price: £5.34 You Save: £3.65 (41%)Prices subject to change. |
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Binding: Paperback EAN: 9780141034591 ISBN: 0141034599 Label: Penguin Books Ltd Manufacturer: Penguin Books Ltd Number Of Pages: 400 Publication Date: February 28, 2008 Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd Studio: Penguin Books Ltd Sales Rank: 16 Related Items:
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 Rating:  - The Emperor has no clothesThe Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable A highly disappointing text from an erudite and capable author. The book is fallacious, mislaeding and mischievious. The abuse of simple statistical distributions alone warrants not taking it seriously. It is oversold by the blurb and does not do what it says on the cover. Extremely disappointing. Rating:  - Good for teachers of Critical Thinking?There are already many reviews here so I'd simply like to add that this could be useful to anyone teaching Critical Thinking. It's full of neat little stories and interesting points. The author often contradicts himself or ignores his own warnings (possibly deliberately to keep the readers on their toes) so it should be used carefully. Rating: - Interesting, but an ego-tripI have to agree with most of the other reviews, that although this book is an interesting read which lets you look at some of the problems in "routine statistics in practice" from a different angle. However, at the same time the book is one big ego-trip with the author being very full of himself and people who share his ideas, while looking down on everyone else. For some reason the authors feels that almost everyone involved in statistics has no idea about the data he or she is working with, no idea of variability of data, and no idea of its shortcomings. Everyone, except himself and some friends... To illustrate this, the author uses interesting and entertaining examples which make the book a good read. Unfortunately, some of ... Read More: Rating:  - Suddenly, it all made sense ...Nothing short of ABSOLUTELY REVALATORY ... notwithstanding other reviewers' comments regarding arrogance, ego, verbosity etc., I found this book to be nothing short of life altering; entertaining and funny in it's written style, too. Working in a profession which constantly deals with unpredictability, including extremely high-impact unpredicability, this book holds up a bright light to the anti-intellectual lunacy prevading my own profession and brings me a clarity of thought I wondered if I'd ever enjoy. NNT was willing all throughout this book to highlight his disdain for 'anti-scholars' who peddle 'anti-knowledge' and I have to accept that some who've missed his main point will take this as arrogance, ego, etc.. ... Read More: Rating: - strong character, strong bookI just read the book whilst in Colombia a bit more than a week ago. Though it shines through that Nassim Nicholas Taleb is an opinionated man (in all positivity) with a rather big than small ego, it certainly needs a character like this to be able to step back from common (dis-)believe and make a critical point can has the potential to smash many of our assumptions about nothing less than life itself. Looking at rare phenomena from an economic and philosophical point of view, he (if his numbers are right) makes a strong point against the industry of predictability for the least. Reading from his experience and research, it makes me think of when I first read Stephen Johnson's 'Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software', ... Read More: |
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