4 ms·
Taleb is exasperating. Pareto-Levy distributions are statistical nihilism the way Taleb talks about them. Data is very often approximately normal. Or can be ap
by scottlocklin 10y ago
Taleb is exasperating. Pareto-Levy distributions are statistical nihilism the way Taleb talks about them.
Data is very often approximately normal. Or can be approximated with something like Student-T. That includes estimators for volatility in stock returns. If you assume your risk profile can be characterized with standard deviation, well, you're an asshole. It also can't be characterized with MAD.
Then you have stuff like this: "MAD is more accurate in sample measurements" -what does this even mean?
- Elrac 10y agoThank you for saying this! I'm just a struggling armchair intellectual, but it seems to me like every half year Taleb comes up with something to loudly hand-wring about, something that nobody else gives a damn about because they're not in the attention whoring business.
- eruditely 10y agoNo, he's completely legitimate actually. He's just so far ahead of people that they can't tell. There's a good Kahneman quote saying he's top 100 intellectuals. http://realworldrisk.com/ http://realworldrisk.com/ http://realworldrisk.com/clients http://realworldrisk.com/clients https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=64BtMdsAAAAJ&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=64BtMdsAAAAJ&hl=en
- jamez1 10y ago>Data is very often approximately normal >If you assume your risk profile can be characterized with standard deviation, well, you're an asshole. Did you know that standard deviation can be used to describe a normal distribution? Or did you contradict yourself on purpose?