Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets » (Updated)

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is the author of The Black Swan. He has devoted his life to immersing himself in problems of luck, uncertainty, probability, and knowledge. Part literary essayist, part empiricist, part researcher, part no-nonsense businessman, he spent eighteen years as a mathematical trader, and was the Dean’s Professor in the Sciences of Uncertainty at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Taleb lives mostly in New York.

Just as coincidence can be confused with causality, so the lucky idiot can be confused with the skilled investor. The realities of randomness and probability almost guarantee that, out of a large pool of random investors, a Warren Buffett will emerge just by luck. Taleb (the founder of Empirica L.L.C., a trading firm and risk research organization) retains that central message in his revised examination of randomness and the consistent inability of humans to recognize it. He explores ways of distinguishing between noise and signal in general and in the financial markets in particular. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Donald Geman

Taleb's book is mathematically sound as well as entertaining and informative for the general public, which is quite an achievement . . .