 • Buy this item from our featured Merchant - Featured Price:
 |
Product Reviews:
The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable |
Rating: 2 (out of 5)
Summary: Not a history of black swan events
Comments: I think I expected something different, like a presentation of various black swan type events. The author, comments and speaks and comments in an essay style which I found dissapointing. Same valid for his other book: Fooled by Randomness.I think readers will get a better deal if they read "Extraordinary Illusions and Madness of the Crowds" as well as almost all of the shareholder letters posted on gurufocus.com. |
Rating: 5 (out of 5)
Summary: Open your mind
Comments: I must recognize that through the easy and entertaining Mr Taleb's style, I have adquired a wider vision of how we, as human beings, almost allly and unreasonably make predictions.
300 pages would have been enough (it has 400, at least in spanish edition).
Nevertheless, I highly endorse this book. Open you mind and have fun!! |
Rating: 2 (out of 5)
Summary: Interesting...if you can get past his enormous ego
Comments: It's too bad Taleb's ego is louder than his thesis. While he puts forth many interesting and insightful concepts and thoughts, the price1must pay to find them amongst the egocentric drivel that fills almost all of the pages makes this read hardly worth the effort. I can not help however think that the basic arguments from such a pretentious elitist could only be hot air. It's hard to take him seriously. |
Rating: 5 (out of 5)
Summary: How compare to author's "Fooled by Randomness"?
Comments: The author has also written "Fooled by Randomness". Both books deal with the same matter; how low risk/chance events can have a major impact more often that realised. The book earns5stars because it forces the reader to think about a important issue.
Which of the author's books should you purchase?
1. What a big font, easy read? Then go for "Fooled by Randomness"
2. Want a small font, more intellectual read? The go for this book.
There is absolutely no need to read both. Just pick the1the fits your temperament.
Any critique? The book is focusing on just1matter and the author is pushing it a bit too one-sided. However, it doesn't matter if the book isn't balanced. The book gets you thinking. You should expose yourself to the ideas. Stylistically the book is not great. However, this is not poetry so I would not put much emphasis on this point either.
Who should purchase? All social scientists, all people investing in the stock market, and all people involved in planning about the future.
|
Rating: 2 (out of 5)
Summary: Surprisingly personal diatribe
Comments: I just finished reading the Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
The book is about the disproportionate effect on our world of highly improbable events, and the difficulty of predicting those events. The name comes from David Hume's observation that many generations of Britons' only seeing white swans was not proof that there is no such thing as a black swan (which do, in fact, exist).
I found the book disappointing. It started out with so much promise; I looked forward to reading all sorts of anecdotal stories of these so-called black swans, and about the disproportionate effect on our world.
Instead, what I got was a 300 page diatribe by1statistician against all the others in the world who disagree with him, punctuated by an occasional gratuitous insult of the French.
After enduring several hundred pages of personal stories about the author's quest to make his statistical theories known (which are not quite as controversial as he would make you believe, by the way), finally in Chapter 15 it seems that he will get to the meat of the matter. Unfortunately, even though the next3chapters were laden with graphs and figures, I encountered no such explanations. Or, if there were any, they were muddled at best.
Even the anecdotes were disappointing. I was excited to start reading about a great vindication of his - the collapse of LTCM in 1998 (which was run by several of his statistical nemeses) - expecting to find a wonderful explanation of what went wrong, and all the financial turmoil which resulted. Instead, he simply stated "it went bust." Duh.
I have no idea why this book has been so highly touted. Perhaps it is because it came on the heels of 9/11, and just before the credit turmoil which started in 2007. however it's not worth your time. |
