Acclaimed author of "The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable" Nassim Nicolas Taleb will deliver a lecture titled "On the Impact of the Highly Improbable."
According to his book "Fooled By Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets," Taleb, formerly a quantitative trader, is interested in "multidisciplinary problems of uncertainy." Taleb developed the Black Swan Theory, which asserts that there is tendency to exclude unexpected or random events that cannot be explained in data models. It these unexpected events, Taleb argues, "end up controlling our lives, the world, the economy, history, everything."
Taleb, a native of Amioun, Lebanon, holds multiple degrees, including a Ph.D from the University of Paris and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. According to his home page, Taleb is finishing a break as a Dean's Professor in the Sciences of Uncertainty, University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He is also a fellow in mathematics in finance, an Adjunct Professor of Mathematics at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University, and a research fellow at Wharton School Financial Institutions Center.
Taleb admits to finding amusement in mocking those who take themselves to seriously and overrate the quality of their data.
"My major hobby is teasing people who take themselves and the quality of their knowledge too seriously, and those who don't have the guts to sometimes say: I don't know," Taleb writes on his home page.
His lecture will take occur on March 26 at 7:00 p.m. in Kresge Auditorium.