Getting Started with Data Science: Making Sense of Data with Analytics

Chapter 6. Hypothetically Speaking

The Great Recession in 2008 wiped clean the savings portfolios of hundreds of millions in North America and Europe. Before the recession, people like columnist Margaret Wente, who were fast approaching retirement, had a 10-year plan. But then a “black swan pooped all over it.”¹

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a New York-based professor of finance and a former finance practitioner, used the black swan analogy in his book of the same title to explain how past events are limited in forecasting the future.² He mentions the surprise of the European settlers when they first arrived in Western Australia and spotted a black swan. Until then, Europeans believed all swans to be white. However, a single sighting of a black swan ...