bluecalm says: "What an assertion! It also proved to be very useful for hordes of scientists... what about some examples of confused scientists?" How about ev

bluecalm says: "What an assertion! It also proved to be very useful for hordes of scientists... what about some examples of confused scientists?" How about every single economist and financial analyst who failed to predict the financial crashes of the last 50 years? Did you realize how much money was lost over the last 50 years by the financial industry's reliance on models that improperly use the standard Gaussian bell curve? Taleb pointed out why the Gaussian is not usually an appropriate model for financial analysis and suggested a return to more conservative models. Yet today Modern Portfolio Theory and the Black-Scholes models (which use the Gaussian) dominate in financial schools and institutions despite the fact that they absolutely utterly failed, not badly, but catastrophically in every financial crisis when they were most needed. You state that "Standard deviation tells you how volatile measurements are". But Taleb shows how financial markets are non-Gaussian and have "fat tails" and gives the data and the supporting arguments. bluecalm says: "As someone who uses it daily I am eagerly awaiting his argument." You're late! Taleb began publishing his arguments years ago and continues to publish. You're way behind. Read his papers and read his books in the following order: Fooled by Randomness http://www.amazon.com/Fooled-Randomness-Hidden-Chance-Markets/dp/0812975219 http://www.amazon.com/Fooled-Randomness-Hidden-Chance-Market... The Black Swan http://www.amazon.com/The-Black-Swan-Improbable-Robustness/dp/081297381X http://www.amazon.com/The-Black-Swan-Improbable-Robustness/d... Antifragile, http://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Things-That-Gain-Disorder/dp/1400067820 http://www.amazon.com/Antifragile-Things-That-Gain-Disorder/... BTW simply because someone's writing style is different does not mean that he is wrong. To me, complaining about a writing style is a form of ad hominem argument. People are different and Taleb is one-of-a-kind. Initially I didn't see where he was going, but once I realized that he was presenting ideas that were absolutely, utterly novel and had real explanatory power I sat up and paid attention. If you read for the facts and the valid arguments you will see that Taleb delivers the goods.