Black Swan
The Innovation Journal: The Public Sector Innovation Journal, Volume 13(3), 2008, article 14. 1
Book Review Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The Black Swan. The Impact of the Highly Improbable. New York: Random House, 2007. Reviewed by James Iain Gow Université de Montréal, Canada This book has had quite an impact since it was published in 2007. According to Wikipedia, it has sold over 270, 000 copies in its first year, was on the New York Times best-seller list for 17 week and had been translated into 27 languages. It is being reviewed here since I believe it directly engages those of us who take an interest in public administration and public sector innovation. Taleb is a multi-talented person, who has divided his time between the practice of investment and the science and psychology of forecasting and decision-making. He is professor in the sciences of uncertainty at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His book is written in an open and accessible style, passing from more general, philosophical and psychological considerations to a technical thesis attacking the usefulness of the statistical bell-curve (when the book becomes very technical the author invites the general reader to skip-over to the next not-so-technical section). Intended also for academics and people already learned in the field, with 18 pages of notes and 27 of bibliography drawn from philosophy, literature, social science and finance, it is a serious study dressed up as a best seller. There are two main branches to Taleb’s argument. First, he argues that there is a lot more randomness than we generally admit. Second, we have trouble dealing with randomness because of the way we think. The “Black Swan” of the title is the one that was discovered to be present in Australia when previously all observations demonstrated that swans were white. This example is used to show that no amount of induction can ever lead to certainty. A single exception invalidates the rule. For Taleb, a Black Swan has three
Book Review Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The Black Swan. The Impact of the Highly Improbable. New York: Random House, 2007. Reviewed by James Iain Gow Université de Montréal, Canada This book has had quite an impact since it was published in 2007. According to Wikipedia, it has sold over 270, 000 copies in its first year, was on the New York Times best-seller list for 17 week and had been translated into 27 languages. It is being reviewed here since I believe it directly engages those of us who take an interest in public administration and public sector innovation. Taleb is a multi-talented person, who has divided his time between the practice of investment and the science and psychology of forecasting and decision-making. He is professor in the sciences of uncertainty at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. His book is written in an open and accessible style, passing from more general, philosophical and psychological considerations to a technical thesis attacking the usefulness of the statistical bell-curve (when the book becomes very technical the author invites the general reader to skip-over to the next not-so-technical section). Intended also for academics and people already learned in the field, with 18 pages of notes and 27 of bibliography drawn from philosophy, literature, social science and finance, it is a serious study dressed up as a best seller. There are two main branches to Taleb’s argument. First, he argues that there is a lot more randomness than we generally admit. Second, we have trouble dealing with randomness because of the way we think. The “Black Swan” of the title is the one that was discovered to be present in Australia when previously all observations demonstrated that swans were white. This example is used to show that no amount of induction can ever lead to certainty. A single exception invalidates the rule. For Taleb, a Black Swan has three
References: Brown, Aaron. 2007. “Strong Language on Black Swans”, The American Statistician 61:3, 195-197. Easterbrook, George. 2007. “Possibly, Maybe” New York Times Book Review, April 23, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/22/books/review/Easterbrook.t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin Gilder, George. 2007. “The Axman Cometh”, The National Review 25 June, also published at http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/summary_0199-6662067_ITM. Gow, J.I. 1994. Learning from Others. Administrtive Innovations Among Canadian Governments. Toronto: Institute of Public Administration of Canada and Canadian Centre for Management Development. Lund, Robert. 2007.”Revenge of the White Swan”, The American Statistician 61:3, 189192. Rogers, Everett M. 2003. Diffusion of Innovations. 5th edition, New York: Free Press. Sandoval, José. 2007. “Black Swan: Book Review” www.josesandoval.com/2007/07/blackswan-book-review Taleb, N.N. 2007. “Black Swans and the Domains of Statistics, The American Statistician 61:3, 198-200. Westfall, P.H. & J.M. Hilbe. 2007. “The Black Swan: Praise and Criticism”, The American Statistician 61:3, 193-4. Wright, Ronald. 2004. A Short History of Progress. Toronto: Anansi. 6