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ABSTRACT

You may well expect from my title that I’m about to plumb the depths of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s theories on catastrophe and quasi-empirical randomness. I, in turn, expect that you’ve already read (or certainly read of) Taleb’s best-selling The Black Swan—The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Allen Lane, 2006) dealing with life’s innate uncertainties and how to expect or even cope with the unexpected. Coping involves learning that the right answer to some problems is, “Don’t know.” I was tempted to end my column right here in order to prove something or other about our many failures in predicting the future, compared with our occasional successes in “postdicting” the past.

REFERENCES

• 1: 1. Quoted rom Nassim Taleb's Fooled by Randomness (W.W. Norton, 2001), by David Smith in his interview with Taleb: Sunday Times, May 6, 2007.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  K. Computing Milieux
  K.6 MANAGEMENT OF COMPUTING AND INFORMATION SYSTEMS
      K.6.1 Project and People Management

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.4 INFORMATION SYSTEMS APPLICATIONS
      H.4.2 Types of Systems
          Subjects: Decision support (e.g., MIS)

  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.2 ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
      I.2.3 Deduction and Theorem Proving
          Subjects: Uncertainty, "fuzzy," and probabilistic reasoning

General Terms:
Management, Theory