To understand how something works, figure out how to break it.
via To understand how something works, figure out… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
To understand how something works, figure out how to break it.
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Monthly Archives: January 2014
To be a person of virtue you need to be boringly virtuous…
To be a person of virtue you need to be boringly virtuous in every single small action. To be a person of honor all you need is be honorable in a few important things (say risk your life or career or reputation for a just cause, or live up to your word when nobody else has guts to do so, etc.)
via To be a person of virtue you need to be boringly… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
BBC World Service – The Global Economy, Nassim Nicholas Taleb
This will be available to listen to (from the BBC) for a year.
Do you underestimate the risk you are under? Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s ideas on probability and risk challenge assumptions made by markets and mathematicians all of over the world. His ideas on our blindness to the impact of improbable events have lead him to be described as a ‘super hero of the mind’ and ‘the hottest thinker in the world’. He is the author of the mega-selling books on randomness and the impact of the improbable on life and on economics – Black Swan and Anti-Fragile. His official title is Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at New York University and he continually ranks as one of the most influential people on the planet. He joins Justin Rowlatt and an audience at the Grand Amphitheatre of the Sorbonne in Paris for a special event, staged in partnership with Paris Dauphine University. Duration: 55 minutes First broadcast: Saturday 11 January 2014
2014 : WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? | Edge.org
Standard Deviation
The notion of standard deviation has confused hordes of scientists; it is time to retire it from common use and replace it with the more effective one of mean deviation. Standard deviation, STD, should be left to mathematicians, physicists and mathematical statisticians deriving limit theorems. There is no scientific reason to use it in statistical investigations in the age of the computer, as it does more harm than good—particularly with the growing class of people in social science mechanistically applying statistical tools to scientific problems.
Say someone just asked you to measure the “average daily variations” for the temperature of your town (or for the stock price of a company, or the blood pressure of your uncle) over the past five days. The five changes are: (-23, 7, -3, 20, -1). How do you do it?
via Edge.org.
We have entered an era where competitive social “scientists” create sophistication but…
We have entered an era where competitive social “scientists” create sophistication but, as they are unchecked (no skin in the game), are increasingly incoherent with elementary notions. (I recall an established financial mathematician who failed my elementary quiz: what happens to the call price if the stock increases). Here is something far more severe.
My answer to the Edge yearly question.
via We have entered an era where competitive social… – Nassim Nicholas Taleb.