Lumifer comments on "Risk" means surprise - LessWrong
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In the context of financial markets, risk = variance from the mean (often measured using the standard deviation). My finance professor emphasized that although in everyday speech "risk" refers only to bad things, in finance we talk of both downside and upside risk.
That it not true, or, rather, not entirely true. VAR is very widely used in the real world and it's not variance. I also think Taleb would facepalm at this definition X-)