An excellent article that gives you a look at the mathematical model, Value at Risk, that brought down Wall Street. VaR turned out to be a problem because it w

An excellent article that gives you a look at the mathematical model, Value at Risk, that brought down Wall Street. VaR turned out to be a problem because it was accepted by the regulators and executives, but it could be gamed by the traders. It has a profile of Nassim Taleb, author of "The Black Swan." A Black Swan is an unpredictable event, because the day to day probability is so low, say a world wide liquidity crisis. Taleb argues against probability based models, because in the long run an outlier is going to kill you. I got "The Black Swan" for Christmas. I have read only 3 or 4 chapters so far, but I highly recommend it. Very interesting and very entertaining.