Nassim Nicolas Taleb

Taleb, a native of Amioun, Lebanon, holds multiple degrees, including a Ph.D from the University of Paris and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. According to his home page, Taleb is finishing a break as a Dean's Professor in the Sciences of Uncertainty, University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He is also a fellow in mathematics in finance, an Adjunct Professor of Mathematics at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University, and a research fellow at Wharton School Financial Institutions Center.According to his book "Fooled By Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets," Taleb, formerly a quantitative trader, is interested in "multidisciplinary problems of uncertainy." Taleb developed the Black Swan Theory, which asserts that there is tendency to exclude unexpected or random events that cannot be explained in data models. It these unexpected events, Taleb argues, "end up controlling our lives, the world, the economy, history, everything."