Google’s big battle will be that they know (and care) nothing about customer support or user interface.
Comments closedAuthor: Emanuel Derman
I said I would try to explain what I mean by sophisticated vulgarity in financial modeling, which I will do by imperfect analogy.
Comments closedEdward Hadas of the FT/Lex has an interesting video on the debt ceiling fiasco called Playing Chicken with America’s Future.
Comments closedIf you are going to seek a career in quantitative finance, what’s your advantage?
Comments closedThe other day the new MSFE students showed up at Columbia for orientation and I had to welcome them. These are some notes from what I said.
Comments closedTerrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life” is not a movie, it’s a multiverse, a meditation, a “Koyanisqaatsi” inspired by the Bible rather than by Buddhist texts.
Comments closedI am perpetually amazed at the way people can/are allowed to reinvent themselves.
Comments closedOnce upon a time a man had a small daughter that he was crazy about. Everything she did seemed like a mark of genius. Her…
Comments closedI have finally finished reading “How The Hippies Saved Physics” by David Kaiser. It made me admire again people who have a passion for something…
Comments closedWhat we call progress is often linked to portability and the autonomy it appears to bring: spears to daggers to guns, pendulum clocks to watches,…
Comments closedThe Holy Tortilla of Liguria. Well, almost, only better ? Mexico and Texas have their tortillas and pizzas with images of the Virgin Mother. Turin…
Comments closedIn Italy they are called nespole, in Cape Town loquats. You could not buy loquats in Cape Town, you could only steal them. They grew…
Comments closedI read an article somewhere today about how BNY Mellon had to pay several hundred million dollars for unfairly overdrafting customers, and it struck me…
Comments closedOn Columbus Circle, in the Laboratorio behind the register white-coated Dotoressas of science and physiology mix extracts of fruits and spices harvested from their Sicilian…
Comments closedAbout a month ago I watched the final episode of The Bachelor, 2011, because it was set in Cape Town and I was curious to…
Comments closedHow Often? @EmanuelDerman
Comments closedThis letter to the NYTimes on Friday points out one of them. To the Editor: If there is an original sin in the Obama administration,…
Comments closedI spent today at the University of Chicago’s James Franck Institute, first giving a talk on finance and then listening to many people tell me…
Comments closedIn my day quants on Wall Street perenially complained about their bonuses, believing that analytical skills should be positively correlated with pay; this was a…
Comments closedI don’t know what to say about Bob Dylan’s submitting to the fearful Chinese government’s censorship of his play list at his concert, but I…
Comments closedI always thought peppermint was a flavor, and have just discovered that it’s also a tactile sensation. To confirm this surprising fact, try taking a…
Comments closedNot having to teach this Monday, I spent a large part of the weekend belatedly reading Peter Woit’s Not Even Wrong, many years after it…
Comments closedBlack-Scholes or Bust There are two ways to look at the derivation of Black-Scholes: (i) the way Black and Scholes derived it originally, which was…
Comments closedYou may have hoid I dumped my droid into a garbage can I found (using Google Voice Search) on the corner of Voice Search: Cue…
Comments closedDiagrammatically
Comments closedIn investing, the crowds get beta, the smart money gets alpha. It’s kind of undemocratic. The SEC, who aim* to level the playing field by…
Comments closedGoogle’s Eric Schmidt, now in the news at Google, is one of the few people I can think of who went from theoretical researcher to…
Comments closedThanks to Dave Edwards for a link too good to keep to myself: John Cleese on There’s a Gene for That: www.youtube.com…
Comments closedI am tempted to say that anything that lessens the power imbalance between individuals and governments/corporations can’t be all bad.
Comments closedTheories deal with the world on its own terms, absolutely. Models are metaphors, relative descriptions of the object of their attention that compare it to…
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