Bullock in my garden? What does it all mean?

LIFE as a student is seldom dull. But for Edinburgh University business student Carol Jacobs, life became unexpectedly interesting when police interrupted her studies to inform her that a bullock was frolicking in her back garden. Quite where it came from or why it had singled out Ms Jacobs' garden are mysteries.

It may be put down to one of those random incidents in life and thus seem to be of little consequence in the greater scheme of things. But can we be so dismissive? What really is random any more? Business courses will take in stock market performance and the behaviour of bulls and bears will be a natural field of study. Might the bullock have been the harbinger of an asset price bubble?

Such courses, in the wake of the global financial crisis, have to wrestle with the complex problems of risk measurement and quantification. Might the appearance of the bullock have been a "black swan" event of Nouriel Roubini fame, an outlier phenomenon more frequent than conventional bell curve studies suggest and which can smash through the most carefully constructed computer models of business risk? How can business strategies be designed to identify bullocks before they appear in the garden? Or can they be made to change course and return to the probability base line? Ms Jacobs' bullock may have been doing a random walk. But it could propel her to an MBA.