sexta-feira, abril 24, 2009

Mais Taleb e os limites da estatística

Beware the Charlatan. When I was a quant-trader in complex derivatives, people mistaking my profession used to ask me for "stock tips" which put me in a state of rage: a charlatan is someone likely (statistically) to give you positive advice, of the "how to" variety.

Go to a bookstore, and look at the business shelves: you will find plenty of books telling you how to make your first million, or your first quarter-billion, etc. You will not be likely to find a book on "how I failed in business and in life"—though the second type of advice is vastly more informational, and typically less charlatanic. Indeed, the only popular such finance book I found that was not quacky in nature—on how someone lost his fortune—was both self-published and out of print. Even in academia, there is little room for promotion by publishing negative results—though these, are vastly informational and less marred with statistical biases of the kind we call data snooping. So all I am saying is "what is it that we don't know", and my advice is what to avoid, no more.

You can live longer if you avoid death, get better if you avoid bankruptcy, and become prosperous if you avoid blowups in the fourth quadrant.

Now you would think that people would buy my arguments about lack of knowledge and accept unpredictability. But many kept asking me "now that you say that our measures are wrong, do you have anything better?" 


Link relacionado:

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/taleb08/taleb08_index.html

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