The big quant boom began in the mid-’80s, when investment firms started attracting venerable names like Emanuel Derman, a South African-born physicist described by Patterson…
Comments closedAuthor: Emanuel Derman
In the last couple of decades drugstore chains (Duane Reade and CVS) and bookstore chains (Barnes & Noble and Borders) have taken over Manhattan. There…
Comments closedOne of the bugbears of my life is (other) people who behave inconsistently, who say, in effect, without batting an eyelash or turning a hair,…
Comments closedThis morning I walked up Columbus Ave on my way to work and passed a Danskin store that had a sign outside that said “Seized…
Comments closedThe other day I wanted to look up some statistics on certain stocks — volatility, correlation with the S&P, etc. I went to yahoo/finance and…
Comments closedI was on an airplane yesterday and was reading the NYR of Books, where the personals are always amusing (Masculin-Feminin) and mostly unrealistic. I like…
Comments closedThe Great Wall The commander-in-chief?so you?ve heard?has begun a mission to fix the system, directly from his office, for us, the citizens in all the…
Comments closed“His great discoveries were like exquisitely carved marble statues falling from out of the sky, one after another. He seemed to be able to conjure…
Comments closedSouth Africa is multi-talented in the sporting field, from women’s 800m runners to football, and I have been catching up on the latest in the…
Comments closedI had a fantasy in which the Fed and the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) switched roles. If a bank failed at 9 a.m. one morning…
Comments closedCape Town, like all of South Africa, is in the throes of preparing for the World Cup in June. Everything is much more spruced up…
Comments closedThe Hemlock Society Updated Alexa Joel, according to newspapers in South Africa where I currently am (2009), tried to kill herself with an overdose of…
Comments closedTalk delivered at Bloomberg on Tuesday Nov 24th, 2009: Fischer Black and the Financial Crisis: Rising Above The Noise I have been working for the…
Comments closedA few years ago someone insisted to me in a conversation that “feelings” didn’t mean the same as “emotions”. I thought about this for a…
Comments closedI was on a jury in 1980. At the start the judge cautioned everyone not to discuss the case with their family or friends each…
Comments closedA few months ago I wondered why banks can pay 50% of their revenue in bonuses, and why their profits are so large. One of…
Comments closedNicholas Wade in the NY Times reviews Richard Dawkins’ new book, The Greatest Show on Earth, about evolution. The review is at www.nytimes.com…… Wade spends…
Comments closedPrizes are just things handed out by a bunch of people, not by God. God’s ones don’t come with announcements, are harder to identify, even…
Comments closedFrom a long view of the history of mankind, seen from, say, ten thousand years from now, there can be little doubt that the most…
Comments closedEnough with the bailout and Lehman. The papers keep writing about it but they have nothing more to say. Let me rather think about consumer…
Comments closedLast night I held a panel at Columbia about the economic system and the principles that should govern it. One interesting question raised but not…
Comments closedMy first day back in NYC and at 1pm as I was about to reach CPW to go for a run in the park I…
Comments closedI like Santa Fe but ? I can’t tell the difference between a JC Penney’s and The Church of JC Latter Day Saints. Everything looks…
Comments closedEveryone is kicking the poor EMH now that it’s down, some of them quite eloquently and hard. But I’m always on the side of the…
Comments closedI am flying to area code 212 To stab a Concorde into you, To plunge a sword into the gangrene. This is a poem about…
Comments closed“So many riders in the Tour de France have been tossed out because of drugs, the overall leader is now a delivery guy from Empire…
Comments closedI went to the doctor one day last week after a few weeks of feeling ill. My doctor is a very nice man. HIs nurse…
Comments closedI used to be a fountain pen fetishist, craving pretentiously named (Dostoeyevsky, Mozart, Oscar Wilde, ?) limited editions of Mont Blancs that always ended up…
Comments closedLast week I spent a day at the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Ontario. It’s a sort of institute for advanced study devoted to theoretical physics,…
Comments closedI received an interesting-looking paper which I converted to PDF and posted at www.ederman.com…… Avoiding Economic Crises via the Stochastic Money Supply Falip. O. Lor…
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