The Black Swan

Some time ago I decided to read The Black Swan, by Nassim Taleb, after spotting several references in other books I enjoyed. Yesterday, when reading A Arte de Pensar com Clareza by Rolf Dobelli, I came across another respectful mention to Taleb and decided to finally put on paper my thoughts on the book.

The Black Swan describes and analyses the phenomena (named Black Swan* by the author) whereby single isolated and unpredictable events (so-called outliers) are sometimes more relevant and important than the remaining vast majority which obey some rule or appear to follow some logic. I will not try to summarise Taleb's marvellous book in a couple of pages, but rather try to describe the general picture and through it hopefully make the reader curious enough to go and read it for him(her)self.

The main idea of the book is that it is wiser to recognise our knowledge's limitations and act accordingly, then trying to use the best tools available to try and predict the unpredictable. Quoting one of the book's examples, you would not want to use a map of the Pyrenees when climbing to the Himalaias, even if that is the most similar to a map of the Himalaias available. This apparently small step, of recognising that we are using the wrong map and to throw it away, may be surprisingly hard. Near the end comes my favourite quote from the book: It is much more sound to take risks you can measure than to measure the risks you are taking.

For the ones more familiar with statistics and/or background in engineering or mathematics the book also offers some insight on normal and fractal distributions, highlighting the differences between both and the conditions under which one may expect to come across one or the other.

Finally, do not lose heart if, at the beginning of your reading, Taleb's writing seems arrogant and condescendent towards the reader. You will find his ideas are definitely worth the hassle.


Filipe Baptista de Morais

* The Black Swan (capital letters) is not the same as the black swan, which is often mentioned in philosofical debates and is basically a fallacy of inductive reasoning.