Nassim Taleb Lecture Notes: Randomness, Decisions, and Human Nature

A reader has sent in a copy of Nassim’s Lecture notes from when he was teaching a course at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA in 2005. The course/lecture series are titled: Randomness, Decisions, and Human Nature (SOM 797R – SYLLABUS).

Unfortunately all the links within the PDF are missing, if anyone has a copy with all the working links to studies, research papers, books, articles, images, etc, please let us know!

>> Check it out here.

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  1. Dear Nassin Taleb,

    I have read your book, the black swan. Then I burn my probabilistics and statistics book I read at the university times.
    Related books as per your interesting book, have read Ilya Prigogine Chemist nobel price book about from chaos to order (related to my chemical engineer studies), and reading Kahneman “thinking fast and slow.”

    Let me tell, that it is interesting to see in youtube your interviews with Kanehman, Neil Fergusoon and all the people you mention in your book.

    As your book is very important for different countries worldwide, what about futurre interviews with Tomas Sowel, or Michael Gelb about Davinci (he has answered my emails a couple of times), Reviel Netz and William Noel (“The Archimedes codex”), John Kehow (“mind Power”) and modern Carl Joung(Brian Weiss); as all of them share several of your ideas, to rediscover history from ancient times and find the black swans of the past to be prepare for the future ones..
    Just one point for a discussion such as the ancient greeeks, your opinion against globalization denies the black swan metaphor, Would you say the same opinion of yours about universalisation.
    Let´s discuss that point if you have the time to answer it.because depends on the language your using for thinking it. By the way, spanish is modern latin, of the New Word that change it history. Thats the language that we talk in Colombia, where there is a big libanese colony, by the way.
    In fact, please let me tell you, that as we are in Colombia, recentley russian army fighterts flew over colombian territory, so that remembers me your history about Libanon.

    I will add, that right now, expresident Alvaro UribeVelez is in the USA. He is a very smart person open to your ideas, who made today a presentation at Ritz theater in Elizabeth, New Jersey. EE.UU. He is indeed a Black Swan.
    To summarize, myself and many millions of other people of the same age like you, would like you to come to Colombia where you will see many of your, fans that agrees that the real universe is the onw your talking about, the black swan.

    Regards,
    Jorge Garcia
    Chemical Engineer

  2. I tried to source the missing links in the pdf and was able to find many of them. The following is my best guess and doesn’t include any private links or links to NNT’s books, just links to various papers referenced throughout the PDF. I tried to source the information from university websites whenever possible.

    Module 2
    Unskilled and Unaware of It https://www.math.ucdavis.edu/~suh/metacognition.pdf
    Tiesska-Zielonki (just an article on) http://www.minyanville.com/business-news/the-economy/articles/weather-forecasters-financial-analysts-economists-nate/9/10/2012/id/43858?page=full
    herding by prominent econophysicist Bouchaud http://www.proba.jussieu.fr/pageperso/ramacont/papers/herd.pdf

    Module 3
    Data-Snooping Biases in Tests of Financial Asset Pricing Models: http://finance.wharton.upenn.edu/~rlwctr/papers/8921.PDF
    A Reality Check for Data Snooping: http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~bhansen/718/White2000.pdf
    Data Snooping Technical Trading Rule Performance, and the Bootstrap: http://consolidation.technicalanalysis.org.uk/SuTW97.pdf

    Module 4
    How the Finance Gurus Get Risk All Wrong: http://www.efmoody.com/mandelbrot.html

    Module 5
    Kahneman’s Nobel lecture: http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/2002/kahnemann-lecture.pdf
    Thaler’s mental accounting: http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/Richard.Thaler/research/pdf/MentalAccounting.pdf
    Lowenstein & Prelec Neuroeconomics: http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~camerer/JELfinal.pdf
    Caveman Economics: http://www.meangenes.org/caveman/Caveman_files/frame.htm

    Module 6
    On the nonobservability of probability: http://www.fooledbyrandomness.com/knowledge.pdf
    Coval & Shumway: “Expected Options Returns http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=189840
    Why are Put Options So Expensive: http://tigger.uic.edu/~olegb/research/mremp.pdf
    Risk Aversion or Myopia: http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&ved=0CCkQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.researchgate.net%2Fpublication%2F227351035_Risk_Aversion_or_Myopia_Choices_in_Repeated_Gambles_and_Retirement_Investments%2Ffile%2Fd912f50eb07386c9d5.pdf&ei=knj6UuKUDuS60AHLz4HwBg&usg=AFQjCNHymYluZSY7wHrVoXqNnWAEWPV8XQ&bvm=bv.61190604,d.b2I

    Module 7
    The Economics of Superstars: http://users.polisci.wisc.edu/schatzberg/ps616/Rosen1981.pdf
    On a Class of Skew Distribution Functions: http://www.uvm.edu/~pdodds/files/papers/others/1955/simon1955.pdf
    Cumulative Advantage as a Mechanism for Inequality: http://www.columbia.edu/~tad61/CA_AR112205.pdf
    Talent and the Winner-Take-All Society: http://prospect.org/article/talent-and-winner-take-all-society

    Module 10
    “long tail” article by Chris Anderson: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html

    Module 12
    HAPPINESS: HAS SOCIAL SCIENCE A CLUE?: http://cep.lse.ac.uk/events/lectures/layard/RL030303.pdf

    Module 13
    Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit http://www.econlib.org/library/Knight/knRUP.html

    Appendix 1

    Barabási, A.-L. and R. Albert. 1999. Emergence of scaling in random networks,
    http://www.barabasilab.com/pubs/CCNR-ALB_Publications/199910-15_Science-Emergence/199910-15_Science-Emergence.pdf

    Barabási, Albert-László and Eric Bonabeau. 2003. Scale-free networks
    http://www3.nd.edu/~networks/Publication%20Categories/01%20Review%20Articles/ScaleFree_Scientific%20Ameri%20288,%2060-69%20(2003).pdf

    Faloutsos, M., P. Faloutsos, and C. Faloutsos. 1999. On Power-Law Relationships of the Internet Topology
    http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~mkearns/teaching/NetworkedLife/power-internet.pdf

    Lotka, Alfred J., 1926. The Frequency Distribution of Scientific Productivity
    http://listserv.utk.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A3=ind0709&L=sigmetrics&P=52661&E=2&B=–%3D-YUefx%2F0auEG8%2B29U7Cdc&N=Lotka+1929.pdf&T=application%2Fpdf

    Merton, R. K., 1968. The Matthew effect in science
    http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/merton/matthew1.pdf

    Mitzenmacher, Michael. 2003. A brief history of generative models for power law and lognormal distributions
    http://www.uvm.edu/~pdodds/research/papers/others/2003/mitzenmacher2003a.pdf

    Price, D. J. de Solla, 1965. Networks of scientific papers
    http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/papers/pricenetworks1965.pdf

    Price, D.J. de Solla. 1976. A general theory of bibliometrics and other cumulative advantage processes
    http://garfield.library.upenn.edu/price/pricetheory1976.pdf

    Watts, D. J., 2003. Six Degrees: The Science of a Connected Age
    http://pdf.aminer.org/000/003/790/six_degrees_the_science_of_a_connected_age.pdf

    Simon, Herbert A., 1955. On a class of skew distribution functions. Biometrika 42:425-440
    http://snap.stanford.edu/class/cs224w-readings/Simon55Skewdistribution.pdf

    Vogelstein, Bert, David Lane and Arnold J. Levine, 2000. Surfing the p53 network.
    http://www.academia.edu/3126304/Surfing_the_p53_network

    Willinger, W., D. Alderson, J.C. Doyle, and L. Li. 2004. A pragmatic approach to dealing with high variability measurements.
    http://faculty.nps.edu/dlalders/docs/p139-willinger.pdf

    Yule, G. 1925. A mathematical theory of evolution, based on the conclusions of Dr. J. C. Willis
    http://math.uchicago.edu/~shmuel/Network-course-readings/Yule.pdf

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