fooled by randomness

“Fooled by randomness” by Nissim Nicholas Taleb is an interesting read. It tries to explain the role of chance in life, more through the example of market. In the course it speaks about probability, skewness, odd, expectation, mean vs. median- what not. The book is written in entertaining manner bringing lot of laugh and thinking. One may agree or disagree with the book, but surely it will make the reader to contemplate. A book can never change a person’s view of life on a single read. (That’s why I stay away from self guide and motivational genre.)But what, a worth a read, will do is resurfacing itself at several places showing how true it was. This book is worth a read.

Trying to explain what this book speaks is not an easy thing, but let me try to point out the ones that pops out after a week (Time is a good filter to remove the noise).

1. If we have sufficient number of monkeys knowing to hit typewriter, then there is a possibility one monkey might produce an Iliad, but it doesn’t mean it will make another epic. More the people, more the chance, the so called success to be a pure random event.

2. If there is an urn with 50 white and 50 red balls, more the red ball you take out less the chance of drawing a red ball on next draw. So in a way past history has a negative co relation in predicting future.

3. Whatever be the number of white swans you see, it is not sufficient to say all swans are white. It just need 1 black swan to say swan can be black.

4. Random thing can decide the outcome but not the way you see it or react to it. This is the important thing that made me to appreciate the book. Means, not the ends that matter. As Nissim says “The only article lady Fortuna has no control is your behavior”