Download or read book The Bed of Procrustes written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and published by Random House. This book was released on 2010-11-30 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of the modern classics The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, and Antifragile, Nassim Nicholas Taleb expresses major ideas in ways you least expect in this collection of aphorisms and meditations—now expanded with fifty percent more material than the hardcover. The Bed of Procrustes takes its title from the Greek myth of a man who made his visitors fit his bed to perfection, either by stretching them or by cutting their limbs. It represents Taleb’s view of modern civilization’s hubristic side effects—modifying humans to satisfy technology, blaming reality for not fitting economic models, inventing diseases to sell drugs, defining intelligence as what can be tested in a classroom, and convincing people that employment is not slavery. Playful and irreverent, these aphorisms will surprise you by exposing self-delusions you have been living with but never recognized. With a rare combination of pointed wit and potent wisdom, Taleb plows through human illusions, contrasting the classical values of courage, elegance, and erudition with the modern diseases of nerdiness, philistinism, and phonies.
Download or read book The Bed of Procrustes written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2010-12-02 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this profound and playful book, Nassim Nicholas Taleb presents his ideas about life in the form of aphorisms, the world's earliest - and most memorable - literary form. Procrustes was a character from Greek mythology who abducted travellers and invited them to spend the night in a special bed, which they had to fit to perfection. They never did. Those who were too tall had their legs chopped off; those who were too short were stretched. Every aphorism here is about a Procrustean bed of sorts - we humans, facing the limits of our knowledge, the unseen and the unknown, resolve the tension by squeezing life and the world into crisp commoditized ideas, reductive categories, specific vocabularies and pre-packaged narratives. Only by embracing the unexpected - and accepting what we don't know - can we see the world as it really is.
Download or read book Incerto written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and published by Random House Trade. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 1873 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The landmark five-book series--all together in one boxed set The Incerto is an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision making when we don't understand the world, expressed in the form of a personal essay with autobiographical sections, stories, parables, and philosophical, historical, and scientific discussions, in non-overlapping volumes that can be accessed in any order. The main thread is that while there is inordinate uncertainty about what is going on, there is great certainty as to what one should do about it. This boxed set includes: FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS THE BLACK SWAN THE BED OF PROCRUSTES ANTIFRAGILE SKIN IN THE GAME
Download or read book Incerto 4 Book Bundle written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and published by Random House. This book was released on 2016-01-26 with total page 1253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series is an investigation of luck, uncertainty, probability, opacity, human error, risk, disorder, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand, in nonoverlapping and standalone books. All four volumes—Antifragile, The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, and the expanded edition of The Bed of Procrustes, updated with more than 50 percent new material—are now together in one ebook bundle. ANTIFRAGILE “Startling . . . richly crammed with insights, stories, fine phrases and intriguing asides.”—The Wall Street Journal Just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension, many things in life benefit from disorder, volatility, and turmoil. What Taleb has identified and calls “antifragile” is that category of things that not only gain from chaos but need it in order to survive and flourish. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better and better. What is crucial is that the antifragile loves errors, as it incurs small harm and large benefits from them. Spanning politics, urban planning, war, personal finance, economic systems, and medicine in an interdisciplinary and erudite style, Antifragile is a blueprint for living in a Black Swan world. THE BLACK SWAN “[A book] that altered modern thinking.”—The Times (London) A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random and more predictable. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11. In this groundbreaking and prophetic book, Taleb shows that black swan events underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives, and yet we—especially the experts—are blind to them. FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS “[Fooled by Randomness] is to conventional Wall Street wisdom approximately what Martin Luther’s ninety-five theses were to the Catholic Church.”—Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker Are we capable of distinguishing the fortunate charlatan from the genuine visionary? Must we always try to uncover nonexistent messages in random events? Fooled by Randomness is about luck: more precisely, about how we perceive luck in our personal and professional experiences. Set against the backdrop of the most conspicuous forum in which luck is mistaken for skill—the markets—Fooled by Randomness is an irreverent, eye-opening, and endlessly entertaining exploration of one of the least understood forces in our lives. THE BED OF PROCRUSTES “Taleb’s crystalline nuggets of thought stand alone like esoteric poems.”—Financial Times This collection of aphorisms and meditations expresses Taleb’s major ideas in ways you least expect. The Bed of Procrustes takes its title from Greek mythology: the story of a man who made his visitors fit his bed to perfection by either stretching them or cutting their limbs. With a rare combination of pointed wit and potent wisdom, Taleb plows through human illusions, contrasting the classical views of courage, elegance, and erudition against the modern diseases of nerdiness, philistinism, and phoniness.
Download or read book Incerto 5 Book Bundle written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and published by Random House. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 1345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The landmark five-book series—all together in one ebook bundle The Incerto is an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision making when we don’t understand the world, expressed in the form of a personal essay with autobiographical sections, stories, parables, and philosophical, historical, and scientific discussions, in non-overlapping volumes that can be accessed in any order. The main thread is that while there is inordinate uncertainty about what is going on, there is great certainty as to what one should do about it. This ebook bundle includes: FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS THE BLACK SWAN THE BED OF PROCRUSTES ANTIFRAGILE SKIN IN THE GAME
Download or read book Fooled by Randomness written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and published by Editeurs divers USA. This book was released on 2016 with total page 1570 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nassim Nicholas Taleb's landmark Incerto series is an investigation of luck, uncertainty, probability, opacity, human error, risk, disorder, and decision-making in a world we don't understand, in nonoverlapping and standalone books. All four volumes--Antifragile, The Black Swan, Fooled by Randomness, and the expanded edition of The Bed of Procrustes, updated with more than 50 percent new material--are now together in one boxed set. ANTIFRAGILE "Startling . . . richly crammed with insights, stories, fine phrases and intriguing asides."--The Wall Street Journal Just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension, many things in life benefit from disorder, volatility, and turmoil. What Taleb has identified and calls "antifragile" is that category of things that not only gain from chaos but need it in order to survive and flourish. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better and better. What is crucial is that the antifragile loves errors, as it incurs small harm and large benefits from them. Spanning politics, urban planning, war, personal finance, economic systems, and medicine in an interdisciplinary and erudite style, Antifragile is a blueprint for living in a Black Swan world. THE BLACK SWAN "[A book] that altered modern thinking."--The Times (London) A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random and more predictable. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11. In this groundbreaking and prophetic book, Taleb shows that black swan events underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives, and yet we--especially the experts--are blind to them. FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS "[Fooled by Randomness] is to conventional Wall Street wisdom approximately what Martin Luther's ninety-five theses were to the Catholic Church."--Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker Are we capable of distinguishing the fortunate charlatan from the genuine visionary? Must we always try to uncover nonexistent messages in random events? Fooled by Randomness is about luck: more precisely, about how we perceive luck in our personal and professional experiences. Set against the backdrop of the most conspicuous forum in which luck is mistaken for skill--the markets--Fooled by Randomness is an irreverent, eye-opening, and endlessly entertaining exploration of one of the least understood forces in our lives. THE BED OF PROCRUSTES "Taleb's crystalline nuggets of thought stand alone like esoteric poems."--Financial Times This collection of aphorisms and meditations expresses Taleb's major ideas in ways you least expect. The Bed of Procrustes takes its title from Greek mythology: the story of a man who made his visitors fit his bed to perfection by either stretching them or cutting their limbs. With a rare combination of pointed wit and potent wisdom, Taleb plows through human illusions, contrasting the classical views of courage, elegance, and erudition against the modern diseases of nerdiness, philistinism, and phoniness.
Download or read book The Star Principle written by Richard Koch and published by Piatkus. This book was released on 2010-03-04 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard Koch has made over £100 million from spotting 'Star' businesses. In his new book, he shares the secrets of his success - and shows how you too can identify and enrich yourself from 'Stars'. Star businesses are ventures operating in a high-growth sector - and are the leaders in their niche of the market. Stars are rare. But with the help of this book and a little patience, you can find one, or create one yourself. THE STAR PRINCIPLE is a vital book for any budding entrepreneur or investor (of grand or modest means). It is also invaluable for any ambitious employee who realises the benefits of working for a Star venture - real responsibility, fast personal development, better pay, great bonuses and valuable share options. Whoever your are, identifying and investing in Stars will make your life much sweeter and richer in every way.
Download or read book Fooled by Randomness written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and published by Random House. This book was released on 2008-10-14 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fooled by Randomness is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand. The other books in the series are The Black Swan, Antifragile, Skin in the Game, and The Bed of Procrustes. Fooled by Randomness is the word-of-mouth sensation that will change the way you think about business and the world. Nassim Nicholas Taleb–veteran trader, renowned risk expert, polymathic scholar, erudite raconteur, and New York Times bestselling author of The Black Swan–has written a modern classic that turns on its head what we believe about luck and skill. This book is about luck–or more precisely, about how we perceive and deal with luck in life and business. Set against the backdrop of the most conspicuous forum in which luck is mistaken for skill–the world of trading–Fooled by Randomness provides captivating insight into one of the least understood factors in all our lives. Writing in an entertaining narrative style, the author tackles major intellectual issues related to the underestimation of the influence of happenstance on our lives. The book is populated with an array of characters, some of whom have grasped, in their own way, the significance of chance: the baseball legend Yogi Berra; the philosopher of knowledge Karl Popper; the ancient world’s wisest man, Solon; the modern financier George Soros; and the Greek voyager Odysseus. We also meet the fictional Nero, who seems to understand the role of randomness in his professional life but falls victim to his own superstitious foolishness. However, the most recognizable character of all remains unnamed–the lucky fool who happens to be in the right place at the right time–he embodies the “survival of the least fit.” Such individuals attract devoted followers who believe in their guru’s insights and methods. But no one can replicate what is obtained by chance. Are we capable of distinguishing the fortunate charlatan from the genuine visionary? Must we always try to uncover nonexistent messages in random events? It may be impossible to guard ourselves against the vagaries of the goddess Fortuna, but after reading Fooled by Randomness we can be a little better prepared. Named by Fortune One of the Smartest Books of All Time A Financial Times Best Business Book of the Year
Download or read book Un cook Yourself written by Nat's What I Reckon and published by Random House Australia. This book was released on 2020-12-01 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nat’s What I Reckon was the tattooed lockdown saviour we didn’t know we needed, rescuing us from packet food, jar sauce and total boredom with his hilarious viral recipe videos that got us cooking at home like champions again. Now that we’ve cooked our way out of lockdown and are wondering what the hell to do next, our favourite ratbag is back – and he’s ready to teach us more about life in this thoroughly unhelpful (but maybe actually kinda helpful?) self-help guide. Nat’s already shown us that jar sauce can get f*cked. But what else is sh*t – and what’s actually not sh*t? Is it all as bad as we feel like it is most of the time? No part of our weird world and strange behaviour is spared as our long-haired guru tells us what he reckons about it all – and amps up the flavour with some eye-watering stories from his early years before a sweary video about pasta sauce shot him to global fame. With Nat’s nine no-nonsense rules, you’ll be on the road to being a better d*ckhead faster than you can say ‘get in the bin’ to jar sauce. And if you screw it up: it doesn’t bloody Parramatta! Features a small selection of Nat's favourite recipes illustrated by Sydney artists Bunkwaa, Glenno and Onnie O'Leary. 'The tastiest self-help book of this generation . . . Regardless of what you take away from Un-Cook Yourself, you’ll definitely be laughing.' Urban List
Download or read book Antifragile written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2014-01-28 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Antifragile is a standalone book in Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s landmark Incerto series, an investigation of opacity, luck, uncertainty, probability, human error, risk, and decision-making in a world we don’t understand. The other books in the series are Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, Skin in the Game, and The Bed of Procrustes. Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the bestselling author of The Black Swan and one of the foremost thinkers of our time, reveals how to thrive in an uncertain world. Just as human bones get stronger when subjected to stress and tension, and rumors or riots intensify when someone tries to repress them, many things in life benefit from stress, disorder, volatility, and turmoil. What Taleb has identified and calls “antifragile” is that category of things that not only gain from chaos but need it in order to survive and flourish. In The Black Swan, Taleb showed us that highly improbable and unpredictable events underlie almost everything about our world. In Antifragile, Taleb stands uncertainty on its head, making it desirable, even necessary, and proposes that things be built in an antifragile manner. The antifragile is beyond the resilient or robust. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better and better. Furthermore, the antifragile is immune to prediction errors and protected from adverse events. Why is the city-state better than the nation-state, why is debt bad for you, and why is what we call “efficient” not efficient at all? Why do government responses and social policies protect the strong and hurt the weak? Why should you write your resignation letter before even starting on the job? How did the sinking of the Titanic save lives? The book spans innovation by trial and error, life decisions, politics, urban planning, war, personal finance, economic systems, and medicine. And throughout, in addition to the street wisdom of Fat Tony of Brooklyn, the voices and recipes of ancient wisdom, from Roman, Greek, Semitic, and medieval sources, are loud and clear. Antifragile is a blueprint for living in a Black Swan world. Erudite, witty, and iconoclastic, Taleb’s message is revolutionary: The antifragile, and only the antifragile, will make it. Praise for Antifragile “Ambitious and thought-provoking . . . highly entertaining.”—The Economist “A bold book explaining how and why we should embrace uncertainty, randomness, and error . . . It may just change our lives.”—Newsweek
Download or read book Skin in the Game written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and published by Random House. This book was released on 2018-02-27 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A bold work from the author of The Black Swan that challenges many of our long-held beliefs about risk and reward, politics and religion, finance and personal responsibility In his most provocative and practical book yet, one of the foremost thinkers of our time redefines what it means to understand the world, succeed in a profession, contribute to a fair and just society, detect nonsense, and influence others. Citing examples ranging from Hammurabi to Seneca, Antaeus the Giant to Donald Trump, Nassim Nicholas Taleb shows how the willingness to accept one’s own risks is an essential attribute of heroes, saints, and flourishing people in all walks of life. As always both accessible and iconoclastic, Taleb challenges long-held beliefs about the values of those who spearhead military interventions, make financial investments, and propagate religious faiths. Among his insights: • For social justice, focus on symmetry and risk sharing. You cannot make profits and transfer the risks to others, as bankers and large corporations do. You cannot get rich without owning your own risk and paying for your own losses. Forcing skin in the game corrects this asymmetry better than thousands of laws and regulations. • Ethical rules aren’t universal. You’re part of a group larger than you, but it’s still smaller than humanity in general. • Minorities, not majorities, run the world. The world is not run by consensus but by stubborn minorities imposing their tastes and ethics on others. • You can be an intellectual yet still be an idiot. “Educated philistines” have been wrong on everything from Stalinism to Iraq to low-carb diets. • Beware of complicated solutions (that someone was paid to find). A simple barbell can build muscle better than expensive new machines. • True religion is commitment, not just faith. How much you believe in something is manifested only by what you’re willing to risk for it. The phrase “skin in the game” is one we have often heard but rarely stopped to truly dissect. It is the backbone of risk management, but it’s also an astonishingly rich worldview that, as Taleb shows in this book, applies to all aspects of our lives. As Taleb says, “The symmetry of skin in the game is a simple rule that’s necessary for fairness and justice, and the ultimate BS-buster,” and “Never trust anyone who doesn’t have skin in the game. Without it, fools and crooks will benefit, and their mistakes will never come back to haunt them.”
Download or read book Procrustes written by Bernard Evslin and published by Chelsea House. This book was released on 1987 with total page 91 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents the exploits of the monstrous bandit who offered hospitality to travelers on the road from Troezen to Athens, only to perform horrible acts once they went to bed. Liberally illustrated with art works representing many centuries.
Download or read book Statistical Consequences of Fat Tails written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and published by . This book was released on 2020-06-30 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book investigates the misapplication of conventional statistical techniques to fat tailed distributions and looks for remedies, when possible. Switching from thin tailed to fat tailed distributions requires more than "changing the color of the dress." Traditional asymptotics deal mainly with either n=1 or n=∞, and the real world is in between, under the "laws of the medium numbers"-which vary widely across specific distributions. Both the law of large numbers and the generalized central limit mechanisms operate in highly idiosyncratic ways outside the standard Gaussian or Levy-Stable basins of convergence. A few examples: - The sample mean is rarely in line with the population mean, with effect on "naïve empiricism," but can be sometimes be estimated via parametric methods. - The "empirical distribution" is rarely empirical. - Parameter uncertainty has compounding effects on statistical metrics. - Dimension reduction (principal components) fails. - Inequality estimators (Gini or quantile contributions) are not additive and produce wrong results. - Many "biases" found in psychology become entirely rational under more sophisticated probability distributions. - Most of the failures of financial economics, econometrics, and behavioral economics can be attributed to using the wrong distributions. This book, the first volume of the Technical Incerto, weaves a narrative around published journal articles.
Download or read book Procrustes Problems written by John C Gower and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2004-01-22 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Procrustean methods are used to transform one set of data to represent another set of data as closely as possible. The name derives from the Greek myth where Procrustes invited passers-by in for a pleasant meal and a night's rest on a magical bed that would exactly fit any guest. He then either stretched the guest on the rack or cut off their legs to make them fit perfectly into the bed. Theseus turned the tables on Procrustes, fatally adjusting him to fit his own bed. This text, the first monograph on Procrustes methods, unifies several strands in the literature and contains much new material. It focuses on matching two or more configurations by using orthogonal, projection and oblique axes transformations. Group-average summaries play an important part and links with other group-average methods are discussed. This is the latest in the well-established and authoritative Oxford Statistical Science Series, which includes texts and monographs covering many topics of current research interest in pure and applied statistics. Each title has an original slant even if the material included is not specifically original. The authors are leading researchers and the topics covered will be of interest to all professional statisticians, whether they be in industry, government department or research institute. Other books in the series include 23. W.J.Krzanowski: Principles of multivariate analysis: a user's perspective updated edition 24. J.Durbin and S.J.Koopman: Time series analysis by State Space Models 25. Peter J. Diggle, Patrick Heagerty, Kung-Yee Liang, Scott L. Zeger: Analysis of Longitudinal Data 2/e 26. J.K. Lindsey: Nonlinear Models in Medical Statistics 27. Peter J. Green, Nils L. Hjort & Sylvia Richardson: Highly Structured Stochastic Systems 28. Margaret S. Pepe: The Statistical Evaluation of Medical Tests for Classification and Prediction 29. Christopher G. Small and Jinfang Wang: Numerical Methods for Nonlinear Estimating Equations
Download or read book What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars written by Jim Paul and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2013-05-21 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jim Paul's meteoric rise took him from a small town in Northern Kentucky to governor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, yet he lost it all--his fortune, his reputation, and his job--in one fatal attack of excessive economic hubris. In this honest, frank analysis, Paul and Brendan Moynihan revisit the events that led to Paul's disastrous decision and examine the psychological factors behind bad financial practices in several economic sectors. This book--winner of a 2014 Axiom Business Book award gold medal--begins with the unbroken string of successes that helped Paul achieve a jet-setting lifestyle and land a key spot with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. It then describes the circumstances leading up to Paul's $1.6 million loss and the essential lessons he learned from it--primarily that, although there are as many ways to make money in the markets as there are people participating in them, all losses come from the same few sources. Investors lose money in the markets either because of errors in their analysis or because of psychological barriers preventing the application of analysis. While all analytical methods have some validity and make allowances for instances in which they do not work, psychological factors can keep an investor in a losing position, causing him to abandon one method for another in order to rationalize the decisions already made. Paul and Moynihan's cautionary tale includes strategies for avoiding loss tied to a simple framework for understanding, accepting, and dodging the dangers of investing, trading, and speculating.
Download or read book Encyclopedia of Biometrics written by Stan Z. Li and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-08-27 with total page 1466 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With an A–Z format, this encyclopedia provides easy access to relevant information on all aspects of biometrics. It features approximately 250 overview entries and 800 definitional entries. Each entry includes a definition, key words, list of synonyms, list of related entries, illustration(s), applications, and a bibliography. Most entries include useful literature references providing the reader with a portal to more detailed information.
Download or read book The Black Swan written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and published by Random House Digital, Inc.. This book was released on 2009-10-13 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the author's point of view, a black swan is an improbable event with three principal characteristics - It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. Why do we not acknowledge the phenomenon of black swans until after they occur? Part of the answer, according to Taleb, is that humans are hardwired to learn specifics when they should be focused on generalities. We concentrate on things we already know and time and time again fail to take into consideration what we don't know. We are, therefore, unable to truly estimate opportunities, too vulnerable to the impulse to simplify, narrate, and categorize, and not open enough to rewarding those who can imagine the 'impossible'.
