Economics

Nassim N. Taleb to Explain 'Black Swans' and the Highly Improbable Mar. 26

Story posted March 09, 2007

Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb — legendary options trader, essayist, researcher, and best-selling author — will speak at Bowdoin College at 7 p.m. Monday, March 26, 2007, in Kresge Auditorium, Visual Arts Center. The talk is open to the public and admission is free.

Taleb's lecture, titled "On the Impact of the Highly Improbable," will focus on chance — specifically, on extreme and rare events that he calls "black swans."

"A black swan is an outlier, an event that lies beyond the realm of normal expectations," Taleb explained in an April 8, 2004 New York Times piece. "Most people expect all swans to be white because that's what their experience tells them; a black swan is by definition a surprise. Nevertheless, people tend to concoct explanations for them after the fact, which makes them appear more predictable, and less random, than they are. ... This distortion, called the hindsight bias, prevents us from adequately learning from the past." Read the article.

Black swans carry a massive impact. Taleb argues that 9/11 was a black swan, as was the astonishing success of Google™, the Harry Potter books, the Beatles, and Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. Black swans underlie almost everything about our world, he believes, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb has devoted his life to immersing himself in problems of luck, uncertainty, probability, and knowledge. Part literary essayist, part empiricist, part no-nonsense mathematical trader, he is the author of the worldwide best-seller Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in the Markets and Life (W.W. Norton, 2001; Random House, 2005), which has been translated into 19 languages. In April 2007, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable, will be published by Random House.

Taleb is Dean's Professor in the Sciences of Uncertainty at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst, professor of mathematics at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University, research fellow at the Wharton School Financial Institutions Center, and visiting professor at Université Paris–Dauphine.

He is the founder of Empirica LLC, an inductee of the Derivatives Strategy Derivatives Hall of Fame, and a veteran options trader.

He earned an M.B.A. at the University of Pennsylvania, and a Ph.D. at Université Paris–Dauphine.

His Bowdoin talk is sponsored by the Bowdoin College Finance Society and the Department of Economics.

**Professors' schedules and office hours

PLEASE NOTE: All economics students must bring your folder to meet with advisor. If you have not made a profile folder in the department, please see Elizabeth H. Palmer, Hubbard Hall, room 105

GET THE INSIDE SCOOP:
THE ECONOMICS MAJOR AND OFF-CAMPUS STUDY OPPORTUNITIES IN ECONOMICS

Are you considering an economics major? Are you wondering where there are good opportunities to study economics abroad? The Economics Student Advisory Committee and faculty invite you to an info session that will answer your questions.

When: Tuesday, 22 February at 7:00 PM

Where:Economics Department Library, First Floor, Hubbard Hall

Refreshments will be served.

Advance questions: contact David Vail (dvail@bowdoin.edu)

Advising and course registration for Fall 2005 semester; deadline 5pm Thurs., April 28

**Professors' schedules and office hours

PLEASE NOTE: All economics students must bring your folder to meet with advisor. If you have not made a profile folder in the department, please see Elizabeth H. Palmer, Hubbard Hall, room 105