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Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in the Markets and in Life by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
azoubine's review against another edition
5.0
A very Taleb title.
This is not my favorite book by this author but he does do an excellent job once again considering different ideas and implications.
This is not my favorite book by this author but he does do an excellent job once again considering different ideas and implications.
billhakim's review against another edition
5.0
A bite-size of Taleb's proposition towards randomness and how to bring yourself to it. As Taleb says, we cannot resist the impact of randomness but rather to be aware that we are prone to it, as a human. A good self-help book (although Taleb wouldn't describe this book as self-help) is not a book that points out the way how to be better since life does not have a single manual. It is a book that tells what is the weakness of us a being and makes us very aware of it. That's one way to describe his works.
There are some repetitions from the previous books (Antifragile and Black Swan), nonetheless, this book would be enough for first-time Taleb readers.
There are some repetitions from the previous books (Antifragile and Black Swan), nonetheless, this book would be enough for first-time Taleb readers.
tudlio's review against another edition
2.0
Some authors' personalities suffuse their books. This can be both good and bad: [author: Steven Johnson], for example, seems like the kind of guy that I'd love to sit next to at a dinner party: funny, smart, interesting and amiable.
[author: Nassim Taleb], on the other hand, seems like the kind of guy I'd rather avoid. In this book he tells us how little he is impressed by people with money, while carefully enumerating how many people with money he knows. His detailed descriptions of his own maverick path stink of false modesty. But my biggest objection is that this book is ostensibly about something other than Mr. Taleb, when in fact every page is a paean to his wisdom and perspicacity.
To the degree that I could tease a point out of the book, it seems to be the same as you see on your mutual fund prospectus: past performance is no guarantee of future results. Mr. Taleb wants us to understand that dumb luck (or the lack thereof) is the best explanation for the performance of nearly any individual fund or trader. If you want to understand the economy, you need to understand that only when applying the law of large numbers can you approach accurate predictions. Anomalous events, on any timescale, are the rule.
Good point. I just wish he hadn't written an homage to himself to make it.
[author: Nassim Taleb], on the other hand, seems like the kind of guy I'd rather avoid. In this book he tells us how little he is impressed by people with money, while carefully enumerating how many people with money he knows. His detailed descriptions of his own maverick path stink of false modesty. But my biggest objection is that this book is ostensibly about something other than Mr. Taleb, when in fact every page is a paean to his wisdom and perspicacity.
To the degree that I could tease a point out of the book, it seems to be the same as you see on your mutual fund prospectus: past performance is no guarantee of future results. Mr. Taleb wants us to understand that dumb luck (or the lack thereof) is the best explanation for the performance of nearly any individual fund or trader. If you want to understand the economy, you need to understand that only when applying the law of large numbers can you approach accurate predictions. Anomalous events, on any timescale, are the rule.
Good point. I just wish he hadn't written an homage to himself to make it.
sytse's review against another edition
4.0
Great read, definitely some of his takes are worth taking forward in various aspects of life.
Despite the sufficiently grounded theory, a lot of personal takes are included; not too hard to notice and only the more valuable if you can discern between the two.
Despite the sufficiently grounded theory, a lot of personal takes are included; not too hard to notice and only the more valuable if you can discern between the two.
isla_tee's review against another edition
3.5
Lots of big words. A little pretentious, but some parts were interesting.
knickknackkittykat's review against another edition
4.0
A great eye opener- Mr. Taleb loves to fault his width of reading with impeccable panache. Good read, learnt some math and phil too.
charleseliot's review against another edition
3.0
4 stars for the content. 2 stars because the author is such an overbearing jerk. Average: 3 stars. (The author says explicitly he doesn't care at all what random reviewers think of him. Fair enough. But he also point out what an unbearable world it would be if everybody thought and behaved like him all the time. So perhaps I should give him another half a star for knowing he's a jerk, and then subtract the half point for not caring. There are gems of insight in this book, but if I have to go mining for the good stuff, I would rather the gems were in haystacks, not dung heaps.)
kgreads12369's review against another edition
Taleb is great to listen to when I’m depressed and need to remember my voice. Also he’s a Virgo.
sumatra_squall's review against another edition
5.0
I'd found Taleb's second book, The Black Swan, a fascinating read and was keen to read Fooled by Randomness, his first foray into exploring the nature of uncertaintly and randomness.
Fooled by Randomness in many ways, is The Black Swan without all the fancy jargon and Taleb's creative vocabulary to describe true randomness and our flawed perception of it - "Mandelbrotian", "Mediocristan", "Extremistan" and "ludic fallacy" just to name a few.
Because of this lack of jargon, Fooled by Randomness also has a more intimate, personal feel to it. The references and examples cited in the book are often grounded in experiences people can relate to readily: what we see on the news (which according to Taleb is flawed, since journalists have a compulsive need to justify themselves by fitting explanations to the data, even random data). How in trading and fund management for example, it is possible for "evolution to be fooled by randomness", where even a mediocre trader can have an incredibly successful run until his luck turns. How survivorship bias (where those who fail disappear from the sample) can skew one's perceptions of success and failure, in areas as diverse as the social pecking order (living in the tiniest apartment in Park Ave makes you feel like a failure since you see only the - bigger - winners - there).
Both books are excellent reads but if I had to pick just one to read, Fooled by Randomness would be it.
Fooled by Randomness in many ways, is The Black Swan without all the fancy jargon and Taleb's creative vocabulary to describe true randomness and our flawed perception of it - "Mandelbrotian", "Mediocristan", "Extremistan" and "ludic fallacy" just to name a few.
Because of this lack of jargon, Fooled by Randomness also has a more intimate, personal feel to it. The references and examples cited in the book are often grounded in experiences people can relate to readily: what we see on the news (which according to Taleb is flawed, since journalists have a compulsive need to justify themselves by fitting explanations to the data, even random data). How in trading and fund management for example, it is possible for "evolution to be fooled by randomness", where even a mediocre trader can have an incredibly successful run until his luck turns. How survivorship bias (where those who fail disappear from the sample) can skew one's perceptions of success and failure, in areas as diverse as the social pecking order (living in the tiniest apartment in Park Ave makes you feel like a failure since you see only the - bigger - winners - there).
Both books are excellent reads but if I had to pick just one to read, Fooled by Randomness would be it.