Just to ensure there are no misunderstandings about "The Black Swan":
Maureen referred to it after it came up on PBS's NewsHour. I used the term in a few subsequent posts. See posts below. ======================== Nicholas Taleb, an applied statistician and derivatives trader-turned-philosopher, is author of "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable." I predicted the current global financial crisis in my last book, The Black Swan. You might well ask why more people didn't see it coming. Well, there are some situations where the outcome is predictable if you board a plane being flown by a drunk pilot, it's significantly more likely to crash. But there are rarer events, such as the current financial turmoil, that have complicated probabilities we can't compute. The problem comes when people make claims about these probabilities; what they say may sound convincing, but the point about these probabilities is that it's difficult to offer any sort of certainty. The disastrous results can be seen in financial markets the world over. http://tinyurl.com/5unckj The Black Swan had print runs for the UK and US markets totaling 370,000 copies by April 2008. It also spent 17 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list and was translated into 27 languages. The impressive sales of Taleb's first two books garnered an advance of $4 million dollars for a follow-up, tentatively titled "Tinkering." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_black_Swan_(book) ================================================= In a message dated 10/21/2008, Maureen wrote: Finally...I'd like to know what you thought of ...the Paul Solman report...The younger one who wrote the book on Black Swans Do you think there's any truth in their gloomy fears of an even more dire domino effect yet to come? Thanks for listening to my rant...Responses? In a message dated 10/24/2008, I wrote: Bye, Bye to Ayn Rand,...to "trickle down," to "self-regulation," to compassionate conservatism, to "greed is good," et al. Bye, Bye to Rove's and Rush's credibility! Enter "The Black Swan," and Poof! to all the above. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AsburyPark/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AsburyPark/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
