What I Have Learned From "The Black Swan - The Impact of The Highly Improbable" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Book Review by Sikander Hayat As far as I have been able to decipher, this book is about the emergence of an event which is totally unforeseen, unpredictable and which cannot be modelled for by our usual forecasting models . Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a great book to read despite its length and tone which shows its anger against the current establishment in academia, industry and just about anyone in high places. Nassim has been a quant in his previous life, has practised financial forecasting methods in trying to choose the eventual winners and has tried to use his practitioner's knowledge to inject life into the idea of his Black Swan thesis. Although he has used forecasting models in his life as a trader, he is fully aware of the short comings of these models and in fact, he makes a strong case against modelling risk with the current tool...