Author: Stephany Aulenback

Nassim Will Speak at the 8th Annual SALT Conference in Las Vegas May 10-13

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Along with a long list of global thought leaders, Nassim will be speaking at this year’s SALT Conference at the Bellagio in Las Vegas on the weekend of May 10-13th:

The SkyBridge Alternatives (SALT) Conference is committed to facilitating balanced discussions and debates on macro-economic trends, geo-political events and alternative investment opportunities within the context of a dynamic global economy. With thought leaders, public policy officials, business professionals and investors from over 42 countries and 6 continents, the SALT Conference provides an unmatched opportunity for attendees from around the world to connect with global leaders and network with industry peers.

SALT is produced by SkyBridge SALT, LLC, an affiliate of SkyBridge Capital, a global investment firm with approximately $12.6 billion in assets under management or advisement as of January 31, 2016. Unique and forward looking, SkyBridge Capital is a pioneer in the alternative asset management industry leading an evolution in the fund of funds space. SkyBridge has redefined the fund of funds investment model by developing a thematic and tactical multi-strategy investment approach to consistently generate attractive risk-adjusted returns. The firm’s investment strategy is enhanced by their unparalleled access to industry decision makers and global financial leaders – including money managers, economists and policy makers– whose insights are integral to shaping our global outlook and opportunity sets. The firm is headquartered in New York and also has a presence in Zürich, Switzerland and Seoul, South Korea.

The Probability Distribution of P-Values

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On his facebook page, Nassim recently posted links to a new short technical paper on the probability distribution of p-values and a video commentary. He wrote:

I was able to pull out the exact meta-distribution of p-values (i.e. p-values as random variables).
The point is that the same phenomenon will produce p-values all over the map.  A true p-value of .12 will produce p-values <.05 more than half the time, so people may never replicate and get the same result.
One Hundred Years of P-Value Bullshit!

Here is the text of the paper, which was originally posted on his website, Fooled By Randomness.

Tail Risk Measurement Heuristics

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Nassim kicks off The Bank of England’s One Bank Flagship Seminar, the first such seminar offered by the bank in an effort at greater transparency:

The first part of this talk – The Law of Large Numbers in the Real World – presents fat tails, defines them, and shows how the conventional statistics fail to operate in the real world, particularly with econometric variables, for two main reasons: 1) we need a lot, a lot more data for fat tails; and 2) we are going about estimators the wrong way. The second part – Detecting Fragility – presents heuristics to detect fragility in portfolios. Fragility is shown to be ‘anything that is harmed by volatility’. The good news is that while (tail) risk is not measurable, fragility is.

Video: Nassim Discusses Complexity Theory at The Fletcher School

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Some highlights of the Fares Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies’ discussion on “Peace for Syria through a A Federal Governance Strategy” with Dr. Yaneer Bar-Yam, moderated by Nassim Taleb. Dr. Yaneer Bar-Yam, founder and president of the New England Complex Systems Institute, discussed complexity theory and violence, with a special focus on implications of the theory in the Syrian context.

Here is the full version of the talk.

Video: Nassim on the Concept of Antifragility

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Discussing the concept of antifragility, Nassim remotely addresses the Theory of Constraints International Conference held in Capetown South Africa from September 6th to 9th, 2015. The theme of the conference was how to use the Theory of Constraints to transform organizations and people from fragile (harmed by volatility) to robust (not harmed by volatility) to antifragile (benefiting from volatility).