The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (Incerto, #2)

by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

The Increase in the Decrease

The main point of the Gaussian, as I’ve said, is that most observations hover around the mediocre, the average; the odds of a deviation decline faster and faster (exponentially) as you move away from the average. If you must have only one single piece of information, this is the one: the dramatic increase in the speed of decline in the odds as you move away from the center, or the average. Look at the list below for an illustration of this. I am taking an example of a Gaussian quantity, such as height, and simplifying it a bit to make it more illustrative. Assume that the average height (men and women) is 1.67 meters, or 5 feet 7 inches. Consider what I call a unit of deviation here as 10 centimeters. Let us look at increments above 1.67 meters and consider the odds of someone being that tall.* 10 centimeters taller than the average (i.e., taller than 1.77 m, or 5 feet 10): 1 in 6.3 20 centimeters taller than the average (i.e., taller than 1.87 m, or 6 feet 2): 1 in 44 30 centimeters taller than the average (i.e., taller than 1.97 m, or 6 feet 6): 1 in 740

40 centimeters taller than the average (i.e., taller than 2.07 m, or 6 feet 9): 1 in 32,000 50 centimeters taller than the average (i.e., taller than 2.17 m, or 7 feet 1): 1 in 3,500,000 60 centimeters taller than the average (i.e., taller than 2.27 m, or 7 feet 5): 1 in 1,000,000,000 70 centimeters taller than the average (i.e., taller than 2.37 m, or 7 feet 9): 1 in 780,000,000,000 80 centimeters taller than the average (i.e., taller than 2.47 m, or 8 feet 1): 1 in 1,600,000,000,000,000 90 centimeters taller than the average (i.e., taller than 2.57 m, or 8 feet 5): 1 in 8...