Posts Tagged ‘ probability ’

Boston Red Sox vs. Santa Monica Black Swan

June 16, 2011
Boston Red Sox vs. Santa Monica Black Swan

While researching for new reasons why Taleb is nuts, I came across this story about his former right-tailed man, Mark Spitznagel. This guy has managed to get 15 investors to ante a minimum of $50 million on a bet that they’ll clean up when the S&P falls 40%. So until then (whenever that is), he is expected to lose money every day in anticipation of that Black Swan event. This may be the best job ever. He sits in his Santa Monica office doing his downward-dog while being wrong 95% of the time. Can you imagine any other job where…

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Using ERM to decide if you should get the H1N1 vaccine

October 30, 2009

The Canadian government is practicing risk management this week. It has begun administering H1N1 vaccines as part of the largest mass immunization effort in Canadian history. But did it assess the impact and likelihood of H1N1 risk properly before implementing this plan? Are people making the right decisions about getting (or not getting) the shot? Against the backdrop of the H1N1 vaccination debate, I thought I would borrow some of the concepts of enterprise risk management to make this decision for my family. There are two sides to this debate: people who will get the vaccine and those who will…

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