The Investor's Shelf — one person
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Former options trader; Distinguished Professor of Risk Engineering, NYU Tandon; scientific adviser to Universa Investments
The Incerto is the primary source for how markets and institutions handle tail risk, and the accompanying technical work supplies the mathematics others cite.
7 books of their own · 40 articles · 42 books they recommend
Books they wrote 7
· 2020 · Technical companion to the Incerto; free preprint on arXiv
Research papers 33
- Hidden Risks and Optionalities in American OptionsarXiv, 2026
- Informational Rescaling of PCA Maps with Application to Genetic DistancearXiv, 2023
- The Probability Conflation: A ReplyarXiv, 2023
- Working With Convex Responses: Antifragility From Finance to OncologyarXiv, 2022
- Bitcoin, Currencies, and FragilityarXiv, 2021
- Unmasking the Mask StudiesarXiv, 2021
- Statistical Consequences of Fat Tails: Real World Preasymptotics, Epistemology, and ApplicationsarXiv, 2020
- On Single Point Forecasts for Fat-Tailed VariablesarXiv, 2020
- Tail Risk of Contagious DiseasesarXiv, 2020
- What You See and What You Don't See: The Hidden Moments of a Probability DistributionarXiv, 2020
- Branching Epistemic Uncertainty and Thickness of TailsarXiv, 2019
- Tail Option Pricing Under Power LawsarXiv, 2019
- On the Statistical Differences between Binary Forecasts and Real World PayoffsarXiv, 2019
- (Anti)Fragility and Convex Responses in MedicinearXiv, 2018
- How Much Data Do You Need? An Operational, Pre-Asymptotic Metric for Fat-tailednessarXiv, 2018
- Gini Estimation Under Infinite VariancearXiv, 2017
- Election Predictions as Martingales: An Arbitrage ApproacharXiv, 2017
- Stochastic Tail Exponent For Asymmetric Power LawsarXiv, 2016
- A Short Note on P-Value HackingarXiv, 2016
- How to (Not) Estimate Gini Coefficients for Fat Tailed VariablesarXiv, 2015
- On the Shadow Moments of Apparently Infinite-Mean PhenomenaarXiv, 2015
- On the Statistical Properties and Tail Risk of Violent ConflictsarXiv, 2015
- The Precautionary Principle (with Application to the Genetic Modification of Organisms)arXiv, 2014
- Tail Risk Constraints and Maximum EntropyarXiv, 2014
- Risk Neutral Option Pricing With Neither Dynamic Hedging nor Complete MarketsarXiv, 2014
- On the Super-Additivity and Estimation Biases of Quantile ContributionsarXiv, 2014
- Four Points Beginner Risk Managers Should Learn from Jeff Holman's MistakesarXiv, 2014
- The Skin In The Game Heuristic for Protection Against Tail EventsarXiv, 2013
- Where Do Thin Tails Come From?arXiv, 2013
- How We Tend To Overestimate Powerlaw Tail ExponentsarXiv, 2012
- The Future Has Thicker Tails than the Past: Model Error As Branching CounterfactualsarXiv, 2012
- Mathematical Definition, Mapping, and Detection of (Anti)FragilityarXiv, 2012
- arXiv author page - technical and working papersarXiv
Blog posts 7
- Bitcoin is the Detector of ImbecilesMedium, 2023
- How I WriteMedium, 2022
- Home and professional page - technical papers indexfooledbyrandomness.com
- The Book is a Book, not Disembodied InformationMedium
- Commentary on the Map of the Incertofooledbyrandomness.com
- Reviewing the Reviewers (Putting Skin in Their Game)fooledbyrandomness.com
- What Do I Mean by Skin in the Game? My Own VersionMedium (Incerto)
Blog
Nassim Nicholas Taleb on Medium (Incerto)
Books they recommend 42
Taleb maintains a categorized reading list on nassimtaleb.org and is a prolific Amazon reviewer, so most of his recommendations carry his own words. He praises Peter Thiel's "Zero to One" ("read it twice. Or, to be safe, three times"), Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow" (a landmark "in the same league as The Wealth of Nations"), and ranges from heavy math and neuroscience to Borges, Montaigne and thrillers.
Superbook reading list 12
Not yet given a topic 3
Peter Bevelin
“Taleb praises it as "a wonderful book on wisdom and decision-making, written by a wise decision-maker."”
William Easterly · not in an entry yet
“Taleb endorses it for its critique of top-down development imposed by "experts."”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb · not in an entry yet
“His landmark book on rare, high-impact events and our blindness to them.”
Psychology and Behaviour 2
Daniel Kahneman
“Taleb calls it "a landmark book in social thought, in the same league as The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith and The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud."”
John Coates
“Recommended by Taleb for understanding the biology of risk-taking.”
Mathematics and Statistics 2
A. D. Aleksandrov, A. N. Kolmogorov, M. A. Lavrent'ev · not in an entry yet
“Taleb praises it as "thinkers doing math, with remarkable clarity, minimal formalism."”
James Franklin
“Recommended by Taleb on the history of probability and evidence before Pascal.”
Philosophy 2
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“His own volume of philosophical aphorisms within the Incerto.”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb · not in an entry yet
“His own central work arguing some things gain from volatility and stress.”
Entrepreneurship and Startups 1
Peter Thiel
“"When a risk taker writes a book, read it. In the case of Peter Thiel, read it twice. Or, to be safe, three times."”
Finance and Markets 1
Benoit Mandelbrot
“On Taleb's recommended list; Mandelbrot's fractal critique of finance deeply shaped Taleb (he dedicated The Black Swan to Mandelbrot).”
Health and Fitness 1
Gary Taubes · not in an entry yet
“Taleb endorses it, calling Taubes "a true empiricist."”
Taleb's collected book recommendations, business and money 10
Finance and Markets 5
Psychology and Behaviour 2
Mathematics and Statistics 1
Sales and Marketing 1
Sociology and Culture 1
Taleb's collected book recommendations, social sciences 9
Philosophy 3
Science 1
Sociology and Culture 1
Mathematics and Statistics 1
General History 1
Economics 1
Decision Making 1
Taleb's collected book recommendations, science and math 9
Mathematics and Statistics 6
A. D. Aleksandrov, A. N. Kolmogorov, M. A. Lavrent'ev · not in an entry yet
Athanasios Papoulis, S. Unnikrishna Pillai
Decision Making 1
Investing 1
Leonard C. MacLean, Edward O. Thorp, William T. Ziemba
Finance and Markets 1
Taleb's collected book recommendations, literature 2
Decision Making 1
Philosophy 1
Where they publish 4
- Books recommended by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
- Superbook reading list
- Shortform — Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Book Recommendations
- TheCEOLibrary — Books Recommended by Nassim Nicholas Taleb