Writer and Professor Emeritus of Financial Engineering at Columbia University
BOOK
Brief Hours and Weeks: My Life as a Capetonian
BOOK
Models Behaving Badly
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The Volatility Smile
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My Life as a Quant
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Why Is This Interesting? – The Tetragrammaton Edition
A single name–Bjork or Madonna–is grand. A single name with its own name is even grander.
Emanuel Derman on X
TIL hecatomb
Hecatomb - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
not sure if anyone is at Bluesky. when I visit the site all is calm, unchanging; I have not had a single new follower in many months; exchanges are always interesting & intelligent but relatively few. Bluesky exudes the air of an upscale mall, beautifully maintained, hushed.
What is perfection itself? Early in Ethics, Spinoza defines it: "Reality and perfection I use as synonymous terms."
How can reality be perfection? Our world is not a Panglossian best of all possible worlds.
1/3 ...
Nevertheless, I observe that our language reveals a sense in which the real and the perfect are synonymous:
Perfect means completed: The perfect tense in grammar refers to actions that have been completed.
Completed means successfully realized:
2/3 ...
Only that which has been completed is actual and realized. (A quarterback "completes a pass.")
Therefore perfect means real: Only that which has been completed as its author intended, whose realization matches the mental model that preceded it, is perfect.
3/3 -- Models.B.Badly.
From somewhere in current @nybooks
