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Andrew Gelman reviews Fooled by Randomness
Columbia professor of statistics and political science Andrew Gelman has posted a review of Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb to his blog. Gelman notes in his comments he notes that he has done research of his own on the statistics of low-probability events, which of course is one of Taleb’s favorite topics. From the abstract:
Researchers sometimes argue that statisticians have little to contribute when few realizations of the process being estimated are observed. We show that this argument is incorrect even in the extreme situation of estimating the probabilities of events so rare that they have never occurred. We show how statistical forecasting models allow us to use empirical data to improve inferences about the probabilities of these events. Our application is estimating the probability that your vote will be decisive in a U.S. Presidential election, a problem that has been studied by political scientists for more than two decades…
Read more: 
Estimating the Probability of Events That Have Never Occurred: When Is Your Vote Decisive?
