The model don't need more consideration for "widespread panic". It needs to factor in the "irrational euphoria" that has made this casino so profitable!
Chill. The grand-parent post is merely suggesting that the math used in finance is not really that smart to start with (nothing that Maple cannot do). It's an expression many mathematicians use. They do it to physicists sometimes too.
The human behaviour they should put into those models arent panic or riots, but what humans do when know what those models predict. Thats the biggest problem about predicting what people will do, what if that people know that prediction?
Well if the behavior is self-referential, chances are that it will diagonalize itself out the entire set of all Turing computable functions, making it beyond computation.:)
But the stock market is not really that complicated. It's just a fantasy finance casino that people go to because they believe that if they don't invest in something, what they have is going to become less in value -- a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Why do people seem to think the only reason developers create something is to get market share? Seems about as sensible as bashing an artist's work because "it will never become as famous as the Mona Lisa"
Because UI classes teach this.
The same UI classes that until today, have not figured out why some people prefer the CLI to the GUI, at least for certain tasks. The question is like, "communism or capitalism?" (I mean Real Capitalism, not the American variant where Wall Street gets everything.) It's whether you want to provide things to people, or to give them the ability to provide for themselves.
Actually the Markov model is prevalent in bioinformatics, as well as other statistical methods. However, the biologists are an entirely different race, typically unfamiliar with advanced mathematics. In fact, the entire field of biology works on foundations and culture so alien to science (fondness for objectivity and modesty) sometimes I wonder whether it is right to call them scientists, or just group them with the social scientists and psychologists.
It's a pity they dominate the big science journals.
It depends on which conference you went to. There are lots of conferences these day that publishes trivial papers -- not because they want to, but because:
Reason 1. Schools have run out of money => They need graduate students for cash => There are not many bright people => Less competent people go into graduate school => In order for them to graduate they need to publish 5 to 6 papers => Competition gets hot => Conferences where people can publish easily while the organizers make money, are created, to cater to every kind of discipline.
Reason 2. Researchers are judged by their ability in getting grants to fight for tenure/full professorship => Researchers apply for more grants, and occasionally more than what they can handle are granted => To partially answer to the received grant publications are needed =>...
And my mother practices Reiki, beliving crystal rocks and chakra/chi are used to heal the body, despite (to my knowledge) any actual benefits noted by any reputable scientific source beyond the placebo effect.
WSJ Journalist: UPDATE: Investors Cheer "Impossible" Planet; DOW Shoots Over 100000. Bernanke Cautions, "Go ahead pump and dump over everything, I won't bail you guys out this time".
I personally would also like to separate out all the entries regarding contemporary entertainment (movie makers, actors, actresses, pop music, cartoons/anime, video games), from things of real concerns... but that is of secondary importance.
The fictional stuffs which currently plagues Wiki, however, is a real threat, because it makes pseudo-achievement looks equal to real achievement. Actually doing science is much harder, and much less glamorous than making a sci-fi movie. If both are given equal honor I think people will become less and less prone to doing the former.
Everyone in academia realizes what's going on, and knows it isn't good for the students or the faculty, but unfortunately that's the way the beans get counted in the academic world.
Same thing they said about the financial industry.
Nobody was willing to do anything about it, so disaster happened.
Nope not Chinese, I am however one of the owners of a small ISP. Personally I think the so called "right to be anonymous" is a bunch of crap. This was and always has been a mistake and the result is a lot of things like harassment, Spam and network attacks. All of which could be reduced in huge amounts simply by people online being able to be identified.
For the sake of human progress, it's worth it.
If freedom means nothing to you pack your stuff and move to China. Otherwise, shut up already.
Absolutely. Freedom of speech is not ingrained in human societies. And there are good reasons why the idea took roots in progressive cultures.
Freedom of speech has to be understood. People have to understand what it is, why it is important, then want it, fight for it, and guard against losing it.
The very inception of the Human Rights Council two years ago was a big mistake, and is based on a total misunderstanding of what "Human Rights" constitute.
From what little I understand from their philosophy --if it can even be called a philosophy-- is that they are trying to invent a new paradigm of "Human Rights", which is to be decided by the majority of the governments of the world. However, can such a new paradigm be rightfully called "Human Rights"?
The preamble added to the UDHR in March already showed how little these governments regard the ideals of human rights. Asking the council to investigate "misuse of human rights" instead of "abuse of human rights" completely took away all remaining pretense of the council's purposes. The banning of mentioning Sharia during council sessions in June finally revealed their true intentions.
They should just start calling it "Islam Rights" or "Regime Rights". At least be honest about what they are really trying to protect.
business.com is way better organized than sourcetools.com.
If you want to argue that such an opinion is subjective then we can do some objective tests: 1. Theoretical. Use some measures to evaluate the amount of work both sites put into their lists. Suggestions: Kolmogorov complexity, resemblance to Google's results. 2. Experimental. Psychologically test with a large pool of human subjects.
An entire country filled with teenage girls, just wonderful... (...)... The only good thing I can say about the Chinese at this point is, at least they're not Muslims, because then they'd be burning down embassies and strapping bombs to their chests.
Very insightful.
I have been spending much thoughts as well comparing the Muslims with the Chinese. Both have a gripe with the west. Both have an education that imprints on their citizens/believers on how the west and others (in the case of china, Japan; in the case of Muslims, Israel) are to be blamed for their people's situation.
Nevertheless, one big difference between these two peoples is that the Chinese believes in reciprocity and is eager to be integrated. On the other hand, Muslims completely lack understanding of reciprocity, and have no intention to align themselves with the world, believing that the world should all hail their superior culture instead. (And what a "culture" that is!)
there is also this wierd elephant on the table that noone talks about relating to the malthusian cycle of cheap students and postdocs being created at a rate that is faster then revenue growht; like most exponential or doubling time events, the crash occurs suddenly
Two of the reasons for this Malthusian cycle: 1) Academics who want (to exploit) students to get their own research work done, and 2) Schools that are after the tuition fees (whether from the students' pocket or as scholarships from the government).
Both which with proper care, can be curbed. The problem is to get people aware of the problem and to help. Stopping the exorbitant money pocketing in the financial sector can help too. Less pay for a few fat cats => more money to create more permanent positions for these post-graduates.
It might be worth it if congress made a committment to ensure careeer stability, but that is not there: not only do you not get paid, but you could be out on the street at any time; anyone with the ability to be a scientist is gonna look at this and say, no way jose
Couldn't have said it better myself. A big problem with lack of motivation in science is that a career in science pays less and less, compared to other jobs, these days.
The biggest offender in this is of course, the financial industry, where we see people pocket for themselves ludicrous salaries regardless of their actual contribution to the society (a year ago it will probably be hard to justify this statement but recent developments certainly show this).
On this imbalance in salaries, one reason often given is that there is a lot of risk involved in the financial professions --- that accountants, brokers, financial advisors, even CEOs and fund managers, could be out on the street at any time.
Of course, no one has ever seen that happening.
On the other hand, there are many other professions (especially the scientists) which carry just about the same amount of risk, with (arguably) more significant contribution to the society, but with much less renumeration.
There are parts in Sharia laws which contradict each other and implies that changes in ideology changed through time. Even if we assume hypothetically that the laws have not changed, or changed very little, this can also be due to a lot of things. Off-hand I can think of a few:
(1) It has not been in use for a long time. (2) It is upheld by a people living under the fear that changing the laws would bring undesirable circumstances, whether by the State or by a fictional divine being.
Of course, it could also be due to that (3) It works so well that nobody tries to change it. (4) It comes from God.
But considering the nature of the Mohammedian rule, it appears that (1) and (2) would be the more likely explanations. (Of course, a good historian can probably give you a few more human factors which might explain it.)
There's a beautiful book for you non-muslims if you want to understand the issue of man-made laws vs shariah (divine laws)
Your laws are divine? I would say that my feces are divine too. The problem with you fundamentalists is that you don't realize that your saying your laws are "DIVINE" is an act as subjective as my saying that my feces are divine.
The whole idea of secular laws is to remove this subjectivity. That is the ideology behind secular laws. (Is it too much to ask for?)
If you don't like it you can claim, subjectively, that Islam is the truth, and you can fight senseless over it with us infidels. We can kill each other, if you want. Or we can make do with secular laws.
Slashdot Mirror
Widespread panic not the only thing left out
Exactly what I felt when I first saw the study.
The model don't need more consideration for "widespread panic". It needs to factor in the "irrational euphoria" that has made this casino so profitable!
A sample size of a few hundred should be used for a scientifically valid test.
I say we go for the asymptotic distribution just to be sure.
Chill. The grand-parent post is merely suggesting that the math used in finance is not really that smart to start with (nothing that Maple cannot do). It's an expression many mathematicians use. They do it to physicists sometimes too.
The human behaviour they should put into those models arent panic or riots, but what humans do when know what those models predict. Thats the biggest problem about predicting what people will do, what if that people know that prediction?
Well if the behavior is self-referential, chances are that it will diagonalize itself out the entire set of all Turing computable functions, making it beyond computation. :)
But the stock market is not really that complicated. It's just a fantasy finance casino that people go to because they believe that if they don't invest in something, what they have is going to become less in value -- a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The market isn't zero sum or negative sum (well, usually). When the economy is good (which used to be most of the time), almost everyone wins.
Are you saying that stock market gains actually follow REAL economic growth?
Explain to me the P/E ratio then.
The economy is NOT growing as fast as stock prices.
It's a fantasy finance casino. That's all it is.
Now people have gone soft.
Yes. They get softer if you cook them. Very good for digestion.
Great, now when someone mentions BFS I won't be able to just assume Breadth First Search.
I pity the google engineers.
Why do people seem to think the only reason developers create something is to get market share? Seems about as sensible as bashing an artist's work because "it will never become as famous as the Mona Lisa"
Because UI classes teach this.
The same UI classes that until today, have not figured out why some people prefer the CLI to the GUI, at least for certain tasks. The question is like, "communism or capitalism?" (I mean Real Capitalism, not the American variant where Wall Street gets everything.) It's whether you want to provide things to people, or to give them the ability to provide for themselves.
Do you have a point? Or did you just use the mention of the term "Pagerank" to come in here and randomly slag off Google?
The poster has a point, and is certainly not slagging off Google.
The point is that the mathematics of Page Rank is not very deep. A fact which can be asserted.
Actually the Markov model is prevalent in bioinformatics, as well as other statistical methods. However, the biologists are an entirely different race, typically unfamiliar with advanced mathematics. In fact, the entire field of biology works on foundations and culture so alien to science (fondness for objectivity and modesty) sometimes I wonder whether it is right to call them scientists, or just group them with the social scientists and psychologists.
It's a pity they dominate the big science journals.
It depends on which conference you went to. There are lots of conferences these day that publishes trivial papers -- not because they want to, but because:
Reason 1. Schools have run out of money => They need graduate students for cash => There are not many bright people => Less competent people go into graduate school => In order for them to graduate they need to publish 5 to 6 papers => Competition gets hot => Conferences where people can publish easily while the organizers make money, are created, to cater to every kind of discipline.
Reason 2. Researchers are judged by their ability in getting grants to fight for tenure/full professorship => Researchers apply for more grants, and occasionally more than what they can handle are granted => To partially answer to the received grant publications are needed => ...
And my mother practices Reiki, beliving crystal rocks and chakra/chi are used to heal the body, despite (to my knowledge) any actual benefits noted by any reputable scientific source beyond the placebo effect.
Do not underestimate the power of the placebo.
http://www.wired.com/medtech/drugs/magazine/17-09/ff_placebo_effect
WSJ Journalist: UPDATE: Investors Cheer "Impossible" Planet; DOW Shoots Over 100000. Bernanke Cautions, "Go ahead pump and dump over everything, I won't bail you guys out this time".
I totally agree.
I personally would also like to separate out all the entries regarding contemporary entertainment (movie makers, actors, actresses, pop music, cartoons/anime, video games), from things of real concerns... but that is of secondary importance.
The fictional stuffs which currently plagues Wiki, however, is a real threat, because it makes pseudo-achievement looks equal to real achievement. Actually doing science is much harder, and much less glamorous than making a sci-fi movie. If both are given equal honor I think people will become less and less prone to doing the former.
Or maybe I worry too much...
Everyone in academia realizes what's going on, and knows it isn't good for the students or the faculty, but unfortunately that's the way the beans get counted in the academic world.
Same thing they said about the financial industry.
Nobody was willing to do anything about it, so disaster happened.
I hope the same happens to academia.
Call me when you feel prepared to revolt.
Thief! You stole my password!
OK. I'll bite.
Nope not Chinese, I am however one of the owners of a small ISP. Personally I think the so called "right to be anonymous" is a bunch of crap. This was and always has been a mistake and the result is a lot of things like harassment, Spam and network attacks. All of which could be reduced in huge amounts simply by people online being able to be identified.
For the sake of human progress, it's worth it.
If freedom means nothing to you pack your stuff and move to China. Otherwise, shut up already.
Absolutely. Freedom of speech is not ingrained in human societies. And there are good reasons why the idea took roots in progressive cultures.
Freedom of speech has to be understood. People have to understand what it is, why it is important, then want it, fight for it, and guard against losing it.
Otherwise, it will be Galileo all over again.
The very inception of the Human Rights Council two years ago was a big mistake, and is based on a total misunderstanding of what "Human Rights" constitute.
From what little I understand from their philosophy --if it can even be called a philosophy-- is that they are trying to invent a new paradigm of "Human Rights", which is to be decided by the majority of the governments of the world. However, can such a new paradigm be rightfully called "Human Rights"?
The preamble added to the UDHR in March already showed how little these governments regard the ideals of human rights. Asking the council to investigate "misuse of human rights" instead of "abuse of human rights" completely took away all remaining pretense of the council's purposes. The banning of mentioning Sharia during council sessions in June finally revealed their true intentions.
They should just start calling it "Islam Rights" or "Regime Rights". At least be honest about what they are really trying to protect.
Your point is right except for one thing:
business.com is way better organized than sourcetools.com.
If you want to argue that such an opinion is subjective then we can do some objective tests:
1. Theoretical. Use some measures to evaluate the amount of work both sites put into their lists. Suggestions: Kolmogorov complexity, resemblance to Google's results.
2. Experimental. Psychologically test with a large pool of human subjects.
An entire country filled with teenage girls, just wonderful... (...) ... The only good thing I can say about the Chinese at this point is, at least they're not Muslims, because then they'd be burning down embassies and strapping bombs to their chests.
Very insightful.
I have been spending much thoughts as well comparing the Muslims with the Chinese. Both have a gripe with the west. Both have an education that imprints on their citizens/believers on how the west and others (in the case of china, Japan; in the case of Muslims, Israel) are to be blamed for their people's situation.
Nevertheless, one big difference between these two peoples is that the Chinese believes in reciprocity and is eager to be integrated. On the other hand, Muslims completely lack understanding of reciprocity, and have no intention to align themselves with the world, believing that the world should all hail their superior culture instead. (And what a "culture" that is!)
there is also this wierd elephant on the table that noone talks about relating to the malthusian cycle of cheap students and postdocs being created at a rate that is faster then revenue growht; like most exponential or doubling time events, the crash occurs suddenly
Two of the reasons for this Malthusian cycle:
1) Academics who want (to exploit) students to get their own research work done, and
2) Schools that are after the tuition fees (whether from the students' pocket or as scholarships from the government).
Both which with proper care, can be curbed. The problem is to get people aware of the problem and to help. Stopping the exorbitant money pocketing in the financial sector can help too. Less pay for a few fat cats => more money to create more permanent positions for these post-graduates.
It might be worth it if congress made a committment to ensure careeer stability, but that is not there: not only do you not get paid, but you could be out on the street at any time; anyone with the ability to be a scientist is gonna look at this and say, no way jose
Couldn't have said it better myself. A big problem with lack of motivation in science is that a career in science pays less and less, compared to other jobs, these days.
The biggest offender in this is of course, the financial industry, where we see people pocket for themselves ludicrous salaries regardless of their actual contribution to the society (a year ago it will probably be hard to justify this statement but recent developments certainly show this).
On this imbalance in salaries, one reason often given is that there is a lot of risk involved in the financial professions --- that accountants, brokers, financial advisors, even CEOs and fund managers, could be out on the street at any time.
Of course, no one has ever seen that happening.
On the other hand, there are many other professions (especially the scientists) which carry just about the same amount of risk, with (arguably) more significant contribution to the society, but with much less renumeration.
Why?
There are parts in Sharia laws which contradict each other and implies that changes in ideology changed through time. Even if we assume hypothetically that the laws have not changed, or changed very little, this can also be due to a lot of things. Off-hand I can think of a few:
(1) It has not been in use for a long time.
(2) It is upheld by a people living under the fear that changing the laws would bring undesirable circumstances, whether by the State or by a fictional divine being.
Of course, it could also be due to that
(3) It works so well that nobody tries to change it.
(4) It comes from God.
But considering the nature of the Mohammedian rule, it appears that (1) and (2) would be the more likely explanations. (Of course, a good historian can probably give you a few more human factors which might explain it.)
There's a beautiful book for you non-muslims if you want to understand the issue of man-made laws vs shariah (divine laws)
Your laws are divine? I would say that my feces are divine too. The problem with you fundamentalists is that you don't realize that your saying your laws are "DIVINE" is an act as subjective as my saying that my feces are divine.
The whole idea of secular laws is to remove this subjectivity. That is the ideology behind secular laws. (Is it too much to ask for?)
If you don't like it you can claim, subjectively, that Islam is the truth, and you can fight senseless over it with us infidels. We can kill each other, if you want. Or we can make do with secular laws.