Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets

Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets | Nassim Nicholas Taleb | Good book; "Black Swan" is better

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Fooled by Randomne...

	Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets Nassim Nicholas Taleb Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2005 - 368 pages average customer review:based on 381 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Fooled by Randomness

What this book discusses, I see daily in politics as well as Wall Street

A must own

Good book; "Black Swan" is better

This book has a lot of very strong opinions and some excellent insights. The discussions of the role of probability and economics are very interesting. The comparisons of trading styles are also very useful. However, his own very strong opinions makes one wonder what black swans he might be missing.

if you like to read Blink! and Freakonomics, you would like this one.

This books illustrates how we humans are wired to underestimate the impact of rare events.

Our (social? genetic?) conditioning towards inductive reasoning may leads us exposed to grave dangers due to decisions based purely on evidence garnered by inductive reasoning.

Highly recommend this one, if you like books on prospect theory, Blink! and Freakonomics.

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Some reviewers didn't read the preface...

I think some of the reviewers didn't read the preface. This author states that he wrote the book as though he were having a conversation with the reader. Hence he refers to himself a lot. The rest can be taken as someone telling you a funny story, which might seem biting to some. I think the reviewers that had a lot of ad hominem arguments against the book are the very same people who would talk the same way in conversation. Opinionated people tend to hate other opinionated people.

That being said, I think there is a lot of good information in this book for someone with no exposure to the concepts. Hence there is a lot of explanatory material to get the novice up to speed. Some reviewers called this "fluff." I found it very helpful. I did think there was a lot of digression, which is okay in conversation, but difficult to keep track of over the course of reading the whole book, so I gave it 4 stars.

This book has made me more interested in this topic. Previously I had some frustrations in some business situations, with no way to quantify what was making me edgy about new processes or practices. Now I am more oriented in those situations and can make more informed critiques or decisions. Very helpful. I will get other books by this author, as well as The Halo Effect, based on this gentle introduction to the subject.

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I have a love-hate relationship with this book

Key requirements of a good book are that it challenge what I think I know and that it introduce me to interesting new ideas. So, despite its many faults, I am giving this book three stars. It challenged much of what I learned in finance and statistics, has spurred me to think more carefully, and has given me a number of great suggestions for further reading. The book's faults can be very distracting, however. Mr. Taleb is an ungracious, needlessly petulant writer whose attacks on others seem grounded in unthinking animus rather than substance. Instead of getting absorbed in his exposition (as in a great book, like "Theory of Justice"), I found that Mr. Taleb's sense of superiority frequently distracted me from his arguments. Had he had a stronger-willed editor and replaced his gratuitous ad hominem attacks with more details supporting his main points, this might have been a great book.

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