Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Taleb in 2010
Born12 September 1960 (1960-09-12) (age 64)
Amioun, Lebanon
NationalityLebanese and American
Alma mater
Known forApplied epistemology, antifragility, black swan theory, ludic fallacy, antilibrary
AwardsBruno Leoni Award, Wolfram Innovator Award
Scientific career
Fieldsdecision theory, risk, probability
InstitutionsNew York University
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Thesis The Microstructure of Dynamic Hedging  (1998)
Doctoral advisorHélyette Geman
Websitefooledbyrandomness.com

Nassim Nicholas Taleb[a] (/ˈtɑːləb/; alternatively Nessim or Nissim; born 12 September 1960) is a Lebanese-American essayist, mathematical statistician, former option trader, risk analyst, and aphorist.[1][2] His work concerns problems of randomness, probability, complexity, and uncertainty.

Taleb is the author of the Incerto, a five-volume work on the nature of uncertainty published between 2001 and 2018 (notably, The Black Swan and Antifragile). He has taught at several universities, serving as a Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at the New York University Tandon School of Engineering since September 2008.[3][4] He has also been a practitioner of mathematical finance and is currently an adviser at Universa Investments. The Sunday Times described his 2007 book The Black Swan as one of the 12 most influential books since World War II.[5]

Taleb criticized risk management methods used by the finance industry and warned about financial crises, subsequently profiting from the Black Monday (1987) and the 2007–2008 financial crisis.[6] He advocates what he calls a "black swan robust" society, meaning a society that can withstand difficult-to-predict events.[7] He proposes what he has termed "antifragility" in systems; that is, an ability to benefit and grow from a certain class of random events, errors, and volatility,[8][9] as well as "convex tinkering" as a method of scientific discovery, by which he means that decentralized experimentation outperforms directed research.[10]


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  1. ^ Berenson, Alex (11 September 2009). "A Year Later, Little Change on Wall St". The New York Times. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a statistician, trader, and author, has argued for years that. ...
  2. ^ Maslin, Janet (16 November 2010). "Explaining the Modern World and Keeping It Short". The New York Times. In his happily provocative new book of aphorisms, the fiscal prophet and self-appointed flâneur Nassim Nicholas Taleb aims particular scorn at anyone who thinks aphorisms require explanation. ...
  3. ^ "The third culture – Nassim Nicholas Taleb". Edge. Archived from the original on 24 July 2013. Retrieved 14 October 2009.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference nyuedu was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Appleyard, Bryan (19 July 2009). "Books that helped to change the world". The Sunday Times.
  6. ^ Patterson, Scott (3 November 2008). "October Pain Was 'Black Swan' Gain". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 14 October 2009.
  7. ^ "Brevan Howard Shows Paranoid Survive in Hedge Fund of Time Outs". Bloomberg News. 31 March 2009. 'black swans' – difficult-to-predict events that can wipe out a fund. The term was popularized by hedge fund manager and author Nassim Taleb."
  8. ^ Danchin, Antoine; Binder, Philippe M.; Noria, Stanislas (2011). "Genes | Antifragility and Tinkering in Biology (and in Business) Flexibility Provides an Efficient Epigenetic Way to Manage Risk". Genes. 2 (4): 998–1016. doi:10.3390/genes2040998. PMC 3927596. PMID 24710302.
  9. ^ "Antoine Danchin on The Anti-Fragile Life of the Economy". Project-syndicate.org. 1 May 2015. Retrieved 7 May 2015.
  10. ^ Derbyshire, J.; Wright, G. (2014). "Preparing for the future: development of an 'antifragile' methodology that complements scenario planning by omitting causation" (PDF). Technological Forecasting and Social Change. 82: 215–225. doi:10.1016/j.techfore.2013.07.001.