Fooled by Randomness

Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Paperback, 368 pages
9780141031484

The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets

Everyone wants to succeed in life. But what causes some of us to be more successful than others? Is it really down to skill and strategy - or something altogether more unpredictable? This book is the word-of-mouth sensation that will change the way you think about business and the world.

It is all about luck: more precisely, how we perceive luck in our personal and professional experiences.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the markets - we hear an entrepreneur has 'vision' or a trader is 'talented', but all too often their performance is down to chance rather than skill. It is only because we fail to understand probability that we continue to believe events are non-random, finding reasons where none exist. This irreverent bestseller has shattered the illusions of people around the world by teaching them how to recognise randomness. Now it can do the same for you.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a radical and paradoxical philosopher for our times. He has spent his life immersing himself in problems of luck, uncertainty, probability, and knowledge, and he has led three high-profile careers around his ideas, as a man of letters, as a businessman-trader, and as a university professor and researcher.

He is currently Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering at New York University's Polytechnic Institute.