A process can often look like a normal distribution but have a large “tail” – meaning that seemingly outlier events are far more likely than they are in an actual normal distribution. A strategy or process may be far more risky than a normal distribution is capable of describing if the fat tail is on the negative side, or far more profitable if the fat tail is on the positive side. Much of the human social world is said to be fat-tailed rather than normally distributed.
Source:
Shane Parrish’s Farnam Street Mental Model Guide
