Volatility

[under construction]

A histogram of financial data may look like it is normally distributed, but it often has much heavier tails than normally distributed data. This may not be apparent using subjective graphical methods.

Article on the consequences of unverified assumptions of normality behind many financial models:

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/feature/id/335383/title/Beware_the_Long_Tail