The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable | 
 enlarge | Author: Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Category: Book
List Price: £8.99
Buy New: £3.58
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Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 152
Media: Paperback
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 5 x 1
ISBN: 0141034599
EAN: 9780141034591
ASIN: 0141034599
Publication Date: February 28, 2008
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
 It's scary finding out the steering wheel is not connected to anything. May 17, 2008
Stephen Parry (Lean Service Architect. London)
Let me start by saying this is a fantastic book, but I did not think that as I was reading it....why? because, the more I read, the more depressed I became, not with the book but with the tearing down of the illusions I have built up over many years about managing businesses and organisations. Realising that all the MBA models for this and that actually feed our futile desire to get control of the future, create certainty and create and illusion that we know what we are doing. These models have created an Illusion of control, far better to deal with reality and be prepared as best we can for big changes which traditional analysis tells us are highly improbable and creates a false sense of security. Taleb has shown that the highly Improbable is anything but.
Taleb deconstructs, (rips apart)very logically, the predictive probabilities associated with the ubiquitous bell curve in a manner a non statistician can understand and provides us with a language to use against the analysts, who are using highly sophisticated bell curve models in an effort to make business decisions. This predictive activity can now be revealed for what it is...nothing more than corporate tarot card reading.
For me, finding out that the steering wheel I have been holding onto to steer my company is not connected to anything is a revelation, and has forced me to see the world as it really is, not as the analysts would have us believe.
Well Done Taleb.
 A rambling padded out diatribe/rant about a simple idea. May 9, 2008
xavier
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book could be summarised as : "Improbable stuff happens more often than people think". That's it! I find it hard to believe that this book has been edited as any editor worth his salt would have cut 90% of it; but then maybe it would not be a book but an article and so wouldn't sell? The book should carry an 'ego alert'. The author makes it quite clear that he thinks that he thinks that he is the only person who really understands how the world (universe?) works, with regard to future events, and everyone else (possibly excluding Mandelbrot) just does not get it. Perhaps he has it the wrong way around? The problem is that he does not have an alternative approach other than: 'expose yourself to [good] random events and not [bad] ones". Not really very useful is it? I'd be interested to hear what his contemporaries say!
 Tedious May 7, 2008
DanBeale (Cheltenham, UK)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
He takes 130 pages to say "History is written by the victors", using a repetitive mish-mash of terribly written fake anecdotes. This really is a problem for the book. A book half the length, with some decent editor, would have been fantastic. The book as it is repeats too much and takes too long to deliver the punch.
A missed opportunity April 25, 2008
W. Addison
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
This book is a real shame because there do seem to be some interesting ideas in it. Had the author got togther with someone like the author of Freakonomics the book could well have been excellent. Because the trouble with this book is that it is so badly written. The style of the book is generally unpleasant to read and it is badly structured - ideas are strung together without much coherence. On its own that might be forgivable, but the author is incredibly self-obsessed and his arrogance comes across only too clearly. The book seems to be largely an outlet for his own pet peeves.
This book is about the logical holes in the way we look at the world and so perhaps the book's greatest sin is that there are logical flaws in the arguments that are presented. The book is meant as some kind of a guide, but Nassim Nicholas Taleb is not a man that I would trust to be my guide.
Enough already....! April 16, 2008
Peter Chambers (London [yes in the UK...])
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Sure there's an ego-trip, and the book could be edited down, and... and... and..., but Mr Taleb presents a set of points that is unarguably rarely presented, and does it with style, humour, accuracy, and effectiveness.
So read it for yourself!
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