Review: Fooled by Randomness...

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Title: Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets

Author: Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Pages: 368 (262 for the main text)

Published: in 2004 by Random House

Find it at: Amazon

Genre: Non-Fiction

My Rating: 4/5!

Fooled by Randomness was a book I had been putting off reading in favor of the attractiveness and pull of fantasy genres. I mean, just look at the yummy YA books out there! If you have issues with holding and containing your impulses to just read YA, books like these might be sidelined, but that's just me. For anyone even remotely interested in understanding the dynamics of our psychology, luck, chance and randomness in life and how it applies to what we do everyday (especially what traders in the stock market do everyday), this might be a book you'd quite enjoy reading. I got down to it finally when an assignment required me to read and review a book based around the financial markets and I figured it'd be cool to read this one! It was just worth it.

Blurb from Goodreads!

The word-of-mouth sensation that will change the way you think about the markets and the world.This book is about luck: more precisely how we perceive luck in our personal and professional experiences. 

Set against the backdrop of the most conspicuous forum in which luck is mistaken for skill–the world of business–Fooled by Randomness is an irreverent, iconoclastic, eye-opening, and endlessly entertaining exploration of one of the least understood forces in all of our lives.

My Thoughts!

I often used to think that books that belong to category of Non-Fiction would be interesting, yes, but not as gripping or telling me stories like the fictional ones do. Probably Fooled by Randomness didn't really tell me a story as such, but it did suggest and explain the theories the author wished to explain, along with his interpretations and understanding about the role of luck and chance in life, with the help of interesting instances, examples, and real life facts. The book basically says, "it is more random than we think, rather than it being all random." At first glance and read, the book seems to suggest that everything in life, especially successes are the result of some kind of randomness, and it seems to bash every kind of 'success', by attributing it to randomness rather than skills. The author by that quote wishes to convey that that is not really what he means, but simply that randomness has a greater role in life than what we give it credit for.

The author has drawn conclusions about a lot of things, especially successes and patterns observed in the stock market based on his experience in Wall Street and taking examples from his colleagues. He's used numerous well established theories (Alternative History, Monte-Carlo Simulations, Nonlinerarities in life, Skewness and Asymmetry, Induction, Survivorship Bias, etc) and based them around stories of the lives of traders, and also ancient stories (like that of Solon, the Greek legislator and poet), to give substance to his interpretations:

- Human beings are unable to handle randomness by intuition, they tend to have explanations even when there are none (like how we actively provide a critique for literary and art works)

- We tend to attribute an extraordinary success to strategy or leadership or (ha ha) intelligence, while most often it is just dumb luck

- Past performance cannot be blindly used to estimate future performance (things in the past might not happen now because they might have been just random!)

This is kind of hard to review, since it is more like a collection of essays based on different themes and theories and stories, mostly revolving around statistics and probability and drawing really interesting conclusions. What's good about this book (and what made it an engrossing read for me) is that it isn't too technical. Yes, there are terms you might not be familiar with, but there are explanations. And the even better thing is, you can simply not focus too much on the jargon and just read the interpretations and you'd understand it all. It's been made quite an easy read with this kind of writing style. Although if I have to talk a bit more about the writing style, I'd have to say the author's been a little too critical and bold in his criticisms of pre-established thoughts. It's like he's downright attacking what you thought with little kindness to go with it. That might hurt traders and people who might just 'look a little too deep' into meanings, like the author says they do. ;)  

He's not that brutal, either. At the beginning of the book somewhere, he says, "It certainly takes bravery to remain skeptical; it takes inordinate courage to introspect, to confront oneself, to accept one’s limitations- scientists are seeing evidence that we are specifically designed by mother nature to fool ourselves" so you know, you don't need to feel too bad about being a fool of randomness. :P

I'd like to mention some lines I really like from the book:

“Heroes are heroes because they are heroic in behavior, not because they won or lost.” 

"Somehow words and reason became ineffectual in front of an oversized diamond, a monstrous house and a sports car collection"

“We favor the visible, the embedded, the personal, the narrated, and the tangible; we scorn the abstract.” 

This, for when you need some inspiration!

“Those who were unlucky in life in spite of their skills would eventually rise. The lucky fool might have benefited from some luck in life; over the longer run he would slowly converge to the state of a less-lucky idiot. Each one would revert to his long-term properties.” 

Actually, there are a lot of quotes I've marked. I'd be writing them down for a friend. If you want to know them, just email me and I'll send a copy across. ;) 

Recommended for: He says MBA students read this book the most (simply because they think it applies to other MBAs and not them :P ), but yeah, it'd be a nice read for them anyway, especially since you'd get an opposite perspective to everything you thought holds true. I'd also recommend this book to anyone who's interested in studying 'randomness' and looking at the application of statistics around the stock market, or simply for a mind-stimulating intellectual read, if you're willing to skip the jargon and read his observations! :) Buy your copy here.

Thank you Random House publishers for this book! :)

Looking for Alaska by John Green...

John Green

Title: Looking for Alaska

Author: John Green

Published: 2005 by Harper Collins

Pages: 268

Find it at: Amazon

My Rating: 5/5!

*This could be more of a why-I-loved-this-book, than a structured-review* 

But I'd suggest you still read it. ;)

Looking for Alaska is my second John Green book, after The Fault in Our Stars, which I inevitably loved. I had a lot of expectations from Looking for Alaska but I actually didn't know much about what the story is going to be like. I guess that's what made me love the book more than I thought it would, because it was totally a "first-time-experience" while reading, not knowing anything in advance what the story would be like. I'd had this book on my TBR just because I loved TFIOS and a couple of friends whose book judgement I trust blindly, had tagged the book under "hugely recommended reads". It (reading the book) was a profound journey, filled with moments of anxiousness, irritation, happiness, smiles, confusion, heartbreak and learning. This book is one I'm going to keep with me at all times, to be opened up to any random page and start reading whenever I feel like it. 

Goodreads blurb!

Before. Miles "Pudge" Halter's whole existence has been one big nonevent, and his obsession with famous last words has only made him crave the "Great Perhaps" (François Rabelais, poet) even more. Then he heads off to the sometimes crazy, possibly unstable, and anything-but-boring world of Culver Creek Boarding School, and his life becomes the opposite of safe. Because down the hall is Alaska Young. The gorgeous, clever, funny, sexy, self-destructive, screwed-up, and utterly fascinating Alaska Young, who is an event unto herself. She pulls Pudge into her world, launches him into the Great Perhaps, and steals his heart.

After. Nothing is ever the same.

My Thoughts!

When the book began, I was confused. And I'm admitting to a very funny (and embarrassing) thing over here: I mentioned how I was clueless about the story? I hadn't even read the blurb properly and had no idea about the characters. So..... well, I took Miles to be a female character. Okay, laugh all you want. Maybe I missed a 'she' or 'her', or maybe it wasn't there at all, but until the first mention of Miles being a 'he' was made (which was maybe 4 pages into the book), I was imagining him as a her. Anyway, so I read those pages over again once I realized the blunder, and read it again with more enthusiasm, because it's been ages since I last read a book with a boy as a protagonist (do you think girls are more used as the protagonist, instead of boys?), that too a boy who wants to live his life inspired by a famous person's last words! How attractive! ;) 

So yeah, I did like Miles. Maybe because I have this hunger for smart kids in books. I love them, they're the kind I wish I had for real in my life as friends (not that my friends aren't smart. I would just love these bookish ones too!). Then came Chip, Miles's roommate who I thought was a bossy character, but he seemed like pretty much a normal guy later on. I really liked Takumi's character, especially in the fox-hat scene! Lara seemed more of a person who's kind of liked by all and you can't help having her around and you automatically include her in your plans and activities and talks. Finally, coming to Alaska. Personally I'm a decent kid. No crass language (okay, sometimes I do use them, but mostly in writing about something that hugely infuriates me), no lies, no crossing limits kind of a person. But I always sensed this other side of me lying in the shadows, dormant. I know even now, given a certain level of freedom, that part could wake up and the desire and hunger for risk and adventure would take over. That's what Alaska was to me. I wondered if I could be the "other side of me", it could come close to Alaska. 

Maybe I wouldn't be too callous with my words and language (frankly, those were the first things that made me think 'This is Alaska? I don't like her character one bit!'). But then I do love books and I wished I could be defined as "the girl who loves books" (Oh wait. Maybe I already am! :D ), but still! I gradually grew fond of Alaska in the most non-traditional sense. I didn't like a lot of things she did, but I still liked her boldness, intellect, randomness, mysteriousness and the way she was loved. One of the most striking things about this book for me was the realization that people are loved so much and cared for, by those who.. well, those who love them. I mean, this kind of love makes me envious. Though I'm a strictly going-by-the-rules kind of a girl, I enjoyed the pranks these guys played. 

I think the "Before" and "After" thing was unique and that is something that adds a lot of value to the book. It gives off a sense of mystery and if you're a clueless-about-the-story-beforehand kind of a reader, you'd be breezing through the story happily until you get to the "bomb" part of the book, which just gave me a minor heart attack. I took a two day break before continuing. The best, best, best thing about this book was how so many things are metaphors. I love metaphors, how they give a sense that you're not alone, that something equivalent to your situation exists somewhere parallel. It's awesome and I loved how this book had the major parts of the story as a metaphor. I loved the reality aspect of the book. That it's not necessary to always have a happy ending, and you can't always have the answers you look for. 

I really love this book because it made me like it despite having so many characteristics I usually don't like in a book. It's like, something that challenged my mindset and won! :D I don't remember if I cried anywhere in the book, maybe in the end reading Pudge's (Miles's nickname) answer to the question, "How will we get out of the labyrinth of suffering?" I think I found this one more profound and moving than TFIOS. Although I like a lot of lines and quotes from the book, I'd still mention a couple of my favorites!

“We are all going, I thought, and it applies to turtles and turtlenecks, Alaska the girl and Alaska the place, because nothing can last, not even the earth itself. The Buddha said that suffering was caused by desire, we'd learned, and that the cessation of desire meant the cessation of suffering. When you stopped wishing things wouldn't fall apart, you'd stop suffering when they did.”

"That is the fear: I have lost something important, and I cannot find it, and I need it. It is fear like if someone lost his glasses and went to the glasses store and they told him that the world had run out of glasses and he would just have to do without.” -- I kind of understood what this means exactly. :D

Recommended for: Everyone. Just be aware that it's considered John Green's "dirtiest" book. It's a book worth reading a million times, and can be best read if you don't read summaries and reviews beforehand.

PS- People living in Delhi! Please fill out the survey form in the tab 'World Book Fair Survey', if you still haven't. Please! It's for my summer internship project.!