Metaphorically Speaking: The Black Swan

Black Swan theory, as developed in the book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, uses the black swan as a metaphor for a rare event with an extreme impact that we, as humans, try to explain in terms of predictability after the fact. We do so because we want certainty in an uncertain world. 

Crime and intelligence analysis would benefit from employing this metaphor to explore how we react to events without considering outliers using sophisticated critical thinking. Unusual events have significant impact on the growth and trajectory of the field of crime and intelligence analysis. Consider a few examples: a group of men hijacking several planes on September 11, 2001, two teenagers in Columbine acting out their psychological disturbances, and the price of copper rising in China influencing the types and rates of burglaries and larcenies in every city in the United States. 

We cannot predict black swans. We know they will occur.