Shattering the Bell Curve; The power law rules. (Review of <i>The Black Swan</i>- not IQ related

Opinion Journal ^ | April 24, 2007 | DAVID A. SHAYWITZ Author of review

[Excellence]

< snip >In "The Black Swan"--a kind of cri de coeur--Mr. Taleb struggles to free us from our misguided allegiance to the bell-curve mindset and awaken us to the dominance of the power law. The attractiveness of the bell curve resides in its democratic distribution and its mathematical accessibility. Collect enough data and the pattern reveals itself, allowing both robust predictions of future data points (such as the height of the next five people to enter the room) and accurate estimations of the size and frequency of extreme values (anticipating the occasional giant or dwarf. The power-law distribution, by contrast, would seem to have little to recommend it. Not only does it disproportionately reward the few, but it also turns out to be notoriously difficult to derive with precision. The most important events may occur so rarely that existing data points can never truly assure us that the future won't look very different from the present. We can be fairly certain that we will never meet anyone 14-feet tall, but it is entirely possible that, over time, we will hear of a man twice as rich as Bill Gates or witness a market crash twice as devastating as that of October 1987. The problem, insists Mr. Taleb, is that most of the time we are in the land of the power law and don't know it. < end snip >

[Tax-chick]

bttt

[SShultz460]

I liked the book a great deal. However, anyone familiar with conservative arguments or policy will not learn much new. It will reinforce much of the way you view the world.

I called it the anti-Secret. But I really liked it