Tag: COVID-19

Never use Single-point Estimates for Pandemics

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ERRORS 101
Never produce a point estimate for risk management, esp. in a fat-tailed domain, rather show statistical properties. Never judge a risk management stance from point forecasts.

[YouTube] On Warnings over Systemic Risks from Global Pandemics

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Nassim Taleb, Universa Investment’s scientific advisor and distinguished professor of risk engineering at NYU, warned of an acute virus spreading throughout the planet in his 2007 book “The Black Swan.” In January, he also warned of the systemic risks of the coronavirus pandemic. He joins “Squawk Box” to discuss.

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[The Guardian] The UK’s coronavirus policy may sound scientific. It isn’t

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Nassim Nicholas Taleb and Yaneer Bar-Yam

When, along with applied systems scientist Dr Joe Norman, we first reacted to coronavirus on 25 January with the publication of an academic note urging caution, the virus had reportedly infected fewer than 2,000 people worldwide and fewer than 60 people were dead. That number need not have been so high.

Link: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/25/…cummings

Uncertainty, Certainty and what to do when there is Systemic Risk

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Third conversation between Nassim Nicholas Taleb & Yaneer Bar-Yam about uncertainty, certainty and what to do when there is a systemic risk; what not to do when a truck is headed your way. How acting early would have cost less? They also discuss:

  • John Ioannidis recent post “we are making decisions without reliable data”
  • Why we should make decisions without reliable data & use precautionary principles
  • How the costs would be so much smaller if we would have acted earlier.

Jan 26 Coronavirus Paper (PDF) – Joseph Norman, Yaneer Bar-Yam, and Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Systemic risk of pandemic via novel pathogens – Coronavirus: A note, New England Complex Systems Institute (January 26, 2020).

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