Category Archives: Books

Nassim N Taleb’s review of The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability before Pascal

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The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability before Pascal

5.0 out of 5 stars Indispensable, August 31, 2013

(Review) By N N Taleb “Nassim N Taleb”

This review is from: The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability before Pascal (Paperback)

As a practitioner of probability, I’ve read many book on the subject. Most are linear combinations of other books and ideas rehashed without real understanding that the idea of probability harks back the Greek pisteuo (credibility) and pervaded classical thought. Almost all of these writers made the mistake to think that the ancients were not into probability. And most books such “Against the Gods” are not even wrong about the notion of probability: odds on coin flips are a mere footnote. If the ancients were not into computable probabilities, it was not because of theology, but because they were not into games. They dealt with complex decisions, not merely probability. And they were very sophisticated at it.

This book stands above, way above the rest: I’ve never seen a deeper exposition of the subject, as this text covers, in addition to the mathematical bases, the true philosophical origin of the notion of probability. In addition Franklin covers matters related to ethics and contract law, such as the works of the medieval thinker Pierre de Jean Olivi, that very few people discuss today.

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Amazon.com: Nassim N Taleb’s review of Probability, Random Variables and Stochastic Processes

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5.0 out of 5 stars
Found no substitute for a difficult subject, July 21, 2013
By N N Taleb “Nassim N Taleb”Amazon Verified Purchase
This review is from: Probability, Random Variables and Stochastic Processes Paperback
When readers and students ask to me for a useable book for nonmathematicians to get into probability or a probabilistic approach to statistics, before embarking into deeper problems, I suggest this book by the Late A. Papoulis. I even recommend it to mathematicians as their training often tends to make them spend too much time on limit theorems and very little on the actual “plumbing”.The treatment has no measure theory, cuts to the chase, and can be used as a desk reference. If you want measure theory, go spend some time reading Billingsley. A deep understanding of measure theory is not necessary for scientific and engineering applications; it is not necessary for those who do not want to work on theorems and technical proofs.I’ve notice a few complaints in the comments section by people who felt frustrated by the treatment: do not pay attention to them. Ignore them. It the subject itself that is difficult, not this book. The book, in fact, is admirable and comprehensive given the current state of the art.I am using this book as a benchmark while writing my own, but more advanced, textbook on errors in use of statistical models. Anything derived and presented in Papoulis, I can skip. And when students ask me what they need as pre-requisite to attend my class or read my book, my answer is: Papoulis if you are a scientist, Varadhan if you are more abstract.

HatTip to Dave Lull via Amazon.com: N N Taleb “Nassim N Taleb”‘s review of Probability, Random Variables and Stochast….

Mathematics: Its Content, Methods and Meaning (Dover Books on Mathematics)

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5.0 out of 5 stars The model book, May 8, 2013

By

N N Taleb “Nassim N Taleb”

This review is from: Mathematics: Its Content, Methods and Meaning (Dover Books on Mathematics) (Paperback)

There is something admirable about the school of the Russians: they are thinkers doing math, with remarkable clarity, minimal formalism, and total absence of unnecessary pedantry one finds in more modern texts (in the post Bourbaki era). This is of course surprising as one would have expected the exact opposite from the products of the communist era. Mathematicians should be using this book as a model for their own composition. You can read it and reread it. Professors should assign this in addition to modern texts, as readers can get intutions, something alas absent from modern texts.

HatTip to Dave Lull
via Amazon.com: Customer Reviews: Mathematics: Its Content, Methods and Meaning (Dover Books on Mathematics).

N Taleb’s review of Models. Behaving.Badly: Why Confusing Illusion with Reality Can Lead to Disaster, on Wall Street and in Life

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Here is what I wrote in my endorsement: Emanuel Derman has written my kind of a book, an elegant combination of memoir, confession, and essay on ethics, philosophy of science and professional practice. He convincingly establishes the difference between model and theory and shows why attempts to model financial markets can never be genuinely scientific. It vindicates those of us who hold that financial modeling is neither practical nor scientific. Exceedingly readable.

From the remarks here, people seem to be blaming Derman for not having written the type of books they usually read… They are blaming him for being original! This is very philistinic. This book is a personal essay; if you don’t like it, don’t read it, there is no need to blame the author for not delivering your regular science reporting. Why don’t you go blame Montaigne for discussing his personal habits in the middle of a meditation on war inspired by Plutarch?

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Antifragile: How to Live in a World We Don’t Understand by Nassim Nicholas Taleb | The Sunday Times

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I t would be easy to think, from his place in the culture, that ­Nassim Taleb writes those ­Malcolm Gladwell-style big ideas books that have been such a recent vogue: slick expansions of journalism with a self-help edge. But Taleb, the author of Fooled by Randomness and The Black Swan, is much, much more eccentric and, in a way, more interesting than that.

A mixture of parables, personal anecdote, ad hominem attacks, pseudo-Socratic dialogues involving an imaginary figure called Fat Tony, aphorisms and homespun philosophy ranging across subjects as diverse as finance, medicine, urban planning, political theory and how best to achieve an ­awesomely ripped set of abs, Antifragile reads like the ramblings of a clever, slightly cracked and intensely chippy autodidact — which is, it turns sout, exactly what it is.

via Antifragile: How to Live in a World We Don’t Understand by Nassim Nicholas Taleb | The Sunday Times.
HatTip to Dave Lull