Just as coincidence can be confused with causality, so the lucky idiot can be confused with the skilled investor. The realities of randomness and probability almost guarantee that, out of a large pool of random investors, a Warren Buffett will emerge just by luck. Taleb (the founder of Empirica L.L.C., a trading firm and risk research organization) retains that central message in his revised examination of randomness and the consistent inability of humans to recognize it. He explores ways of distinguishing between noise and signal in general and in the financial markets in particular. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR