“While in theory randomness is an intrinsic property, in practice, randomness is incomplete information.”

—  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Source: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007), p. 198

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 "While in theory randomness is an intrinsic property, in practice, randomness is incomplete information." by Nassim Nicholas Taleb?
Nassim Nicholas Taleb photo
Nassim Nicholas Taleb 196
Lebanese-American essayist, scholar, statistician, former t… 1960

Related quotes

George Klir photo

“Probability theory is an ideal tool for formalizing uncertainty in situations where class frequencies are known or where evidence is based on outcomes of a sufficiently long series of independent random experiments. Possibility theory, on the other hand, is ideal for formalizing incomplete information expressed in terms of fuzzy propositions.”

George Klir (1932–2016) American computer scientist

Source: Fuzzy sets and fuzzy logic (1995), p. 205 cited in: Flavio Comim, et al. (2008) The Capability Approach: Concepts, Measures and Applications. p. 298.

Leonard Mlodinow photo

“The theory of randomness is fundamentally a codification of common sense.”

Leonard Mlodinow book The Drunkard's Walk

Source: The Drunkard's Walk, Chapter 2, The Laws Of Truths And Half - Truths, p. 21 (See also: William Feller)

“A weakness of the random-walk model lies in its assumption of instantaneous adjustment, whereas the information impelling a stock market toward its "intrinsic value" gradually becomes disseminated throughout the market place.”

Richard Arnold Epstein (1927) American physicist

Source: The Theory of Gambling and Statistical Logic (Revised Edition) 1977, Chapter Nine, Weighted Statistical Logic And Statistical Games, p. 299

“Practice Random Acts of Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty”

Richard Carlson (1961–2006) Author, psychotherapist and motivational speaker

Lesson 34, Practice Random Acts of Kindness
Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff…and it’s all Small Stuff (1997)
Context: There is a bumper sticker that has been out for some time now. You see it on cars all across the nation. It says, "Practice Random Acts of Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty." I have no idea who thought of this idea, but I've never seen a more important message on a car in front of me.
Practicing random kindness is an effective way to get in touch with the joy of giving without expecting anything in return. It's best practiced without letting anyone know what you are doing.

Jimmy Wales photo

“Random speculative pseudo information should be removed, unless it can be sourced.”

Jimmy Wales (1966) Wikipedia co-founder and American Internet entrepreneur

Zero information is preferred to misleading or false information https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikien-l/2006-May/046440.html - Email to WikiEN-l, Tue May 16 20:30:15 UTC 2006
About falseness

“The classical theory of probability was devoted mainly to a study of the gamble's gain, which is again a random variable; in fact, every random variable can be interpreted as the gain of a real or imaginary gambler in a suitable game.”

William Feller (1906–1970) Croatian-American mathematician

Source: An Introduction To Probability Theory And Its Applications (Third Edition), Chapter IX, Random Variables; Expectation, p. 212.

Donald Ervin Knuth photo

“Random numbers should not be generated with a method chosen at random”

Donald Ervin Knuth book The Art of Computer Programming

Vol. II, Seminumerical Algorithms
The Art of Computer Programming (1968–2011)

Richard Dawkins photo

“Mutation is random; natural selection is the very opposite of random.”

Richard Dawkins book The Blind Watchmaker

Source: The Blind Watchmaker (1986), Chapter 2 “Good Design” (p. 41)

Walter A. Shewhart photo

“The definition of random in terms of a physical operation is notoriously without effect on the mathematical operations of statistical theory because so far as these mathematical operations are concerned random is purely and simply an undefined term. The formal and abstract mathematical theory has an independent and sometimes lonely existence of its own. But when an undefined mathematical term such as random is given a definite operational meaning in physical terms, it takes on empirical and practical significance. Every mathematical theorem involving this mathematically undefined concept can then be given the following predictive form: If you do so and so, then such and such will happen.”

Walter A. Shewhart (1891–1967) American statistician

[Shewhart, Walter A., Deming, William E., Statistical Method from the Viewpoint of Quality Control, The Graduate School, The Department of Agriculture, 1939, 18]
Economic Control of Quality of Manufactured Product,1931

Robert A. Heinlein photo

“Random chance was not a sufficient explanation of the Universe---in fact, random chance was not sufficient to explain random chance; the pot could not hold itself.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Stranger in a Strange Land

Source: Stranger in a Strange Land

Related topics