“The casino is the only human venture I know where the probabilities are known, Gaussian (i. e., bell-curve), and almost computable.”

—  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007), p. 127

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The casino is the only human venture I know where the probabilities are known, Gaussian (i. e., bell-curve), and almost…" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb?
Nassim Nicholas Taleb photo
Nassim Nicholas Taleb 196
Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former t… 1960

Related quotes

John Nash photo

“By the time I was a student in high school I was reading the classic Men of Mathematics by E. T. Bell and I remember succeeding in proving the classic Fermat theorem about an integer multiplied by itself p times where p is a prime.”

John Nash (1928–2015) American mathematician and Nobel Prize laureate

Autobiographical essay (1994)

Hans Reichenbach photo

“…the relation of betweenness on the torus is undetermined for curves that cannot be contracted to a point [e. g., circles around a doughnut hole], i. e., for three of such curves it is not uniquely determined which of them lies between the other two... This indeterminateness… has the consequence that such a curve [alone] does not divide the surface of the torus into two separate domains; between points to the "right" and to the "left" of the line.”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928, tr. 1957)

Alan Kay photo

“I don't know how many of you have ever met Dijkstra, but you probably know that arrogance in computer science is measured in nano-Dijkstras.”

Alan Kay (1940) computer scientist

The Computer Revolution hasn't happend yet — 1997 OOPSLA Keynote http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKg1hTOQXoY
1990s

Agatha Christie photo

“I know there's a proverb which that says 'To err is human,' but a human error is nothing to what a computer can do if it tries.”

Agatha Christie book Hallowe'en Party

Source: Hallowe'en Party

“But I kept it to myself--maybe because I didn't think it mattered, but probably because, in a place where everyone knew my story, it was nice to know there was a chapter that only I had read.”

Ally Carter I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

Source: I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You

K. R. Narayanan photo

“The courts are no longer cathedrals. They are…casinos where the throw of the dice matters.”

K. R. Narayanan (1920–2005) 9th Vice President and the 10th President of India

Lina Gonsalves in: Women and Human Rights http://books.google.co.in/books?id=FBn_mCImoagC&pg=PA4, APH Publishing, 2001
At the Golden Jubilee Celebrations of the Supreme Court on the aspect of money and power getting precedence over justice.

Shaun Ellis photo

“I have to come to terms with the fact that I am not good at human relationships. I've known some wonderful women and I have beautiful children but I've probably disappointed them all. I regret that.”

Shaun Ellis (1977) American football player, defensive end

I howled for the woman I loved... and she howled back - British wolfman tells how his obsession drove away the love of his life http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1245507/I-howled-woman-I-loved--howled--British-wolfman-tells-obsession-drove-away-love-life.html, Daily Mail, (23 January, 2010)

“It is not merely a question of calculating with probabilities but also one of relating the ingredients of your probability statements to reality. You do not need to think only about p(E|K) but also about the precise nature of E and K.”

Dennis Lindley (1923–2013) British statistician

5. The Rules of Probability. p. 78.
Understanding Uncertainty (2006)

Edward Hopper photo

“It's probably a reflection of my own, if I may say, loneliness. I don't know. It could be the whole human condition.”

Edward Hopper (1882–1967) prominent American realist painter and printmaker

Hopper’s respond on a comment of an interviewer about the 'lack of communication' in his painting art
1941 - 1967
Source: an interview with Aline Saarinen, 'Sunday Show', NBC-TV 1964, transcript, p. 3

Nick Herbert photo

“A universe that displays local phenomena but upon a non-local reality is the only sort of world consistent with known facts and Bell's proof.”

Nick Herbert (1936) American physicist

Source: Quantum Reality - Beyond The New Physics, Chapter 12, Bell's Interconnectedness Theorem, p. 230

Related topics