The Black Swan : Nassim Nicholas Teleb

The Black Swan is well worth a read, but if he had cut the number of pages by 1/3 it would have been a far better book. The journey is a bit random, there is too much fluff, but then the story is a complex one which is quite subtle in many respects.

So a very quick summary of the main points I got from reading it were

• Proposing the use of a Gaussian distribution for assessing risk for real world events is ballocks.
• The events that you need to worry about are the ones you don't worry about
• Don't forget the positive black swans
• Few experts have any better insight into what disaster/wonderful opportunity may arise next and when it might appear
• Those who get predicting the future right are lucky
• Don't worry, it won't help much

There is a lot of distance travelled in the book, many stories told which add insight, but could have benefited from being a shorter book.