We’ve all heard that question before. Even if one just answers “out,” not wanting to get into the details, it’s good to have a destination in mind. Some of you will have guessed that this is really a metaphor for life after grad school. Want another one? I saw a cartoon in the New Yorker magazine with a self-proclaimed prophet standing on a sidewalk and holding a sign reading “the end is near.” A man in a business suit is asking him “Yes, but what are your goals?”
I have become fascinated with rare and unpredictable events. My interest was triggered by the book, “The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable,” by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a renowned financial economist. The theory defines so called black swan events as the following (from Wikipedia):

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