The £38mn is to build the machine. It is in 1-time use for 56 hours.
There are 8776 hours in a year. Assume the machine has a life of 3 years before it becomes obselete. That means (discouting TVM at 0% for simplicity) the machine can do 470 problems of this type in three years, breaking even at a little over $80 per problem.
I live in central London (one of the highest density places in the world) and am unable, to buy Pizza Hut pizza because (all the areas on the website claim to but telephone operators deny it) they fail to deliver to my area. Friends in other areas on London also experience the same problem: more areas seem undeliverable than deliverable.
Nothing like advertising on London regional channels when you rarely deliver there for a waste of money. Everquest, well I don't care, now a Pizza Hut clan on Counterstrike, well they'd be the terrorists with bellied which ran slowely and couldn't think straight from constipation.
You may laugh but it is to-the-point, simple to use and with the emulator the user can have a windowed environment.
DEC databases,b-tree, c-tree, whatever, built in the 80s still run business critical systems today. They are accurate, staff use them without any problems. These days a business-oritntated database promotes itself as being 'extensable' but if you get a life cycle of over 3 years you're lucky.
IT consultancy gone mad. Two-bit programmers learn object-orientated programming and SQL at university 'Computer Science' courses. Fantastic, interesting stuff. But them they reinvent a wheel re-creating a system which already existed but 'adding a nicer GUI and greated extendability'. Examples:
1. 'User-firendlyness': A user wants to run a pre-existing report. Is it better to load a lightening-fast console, press 2 to get a report menu and 3 to choose the report, or is it better to load a slow windowed application click on 'reports' menu and choose the purple and green icon. Indifferent? Then why is it better to create a new system? Plus the users will have to be trained on the new one. If you really want to have a windowed system a WM can be strapped on to an existing code base, it is not necessary to reinvent the wheel.
2. 'Stability': DEC VAX as stable, a computer in my office which runs business-critical accounts has been 'always on' for over 5 years. SQL server stable? Oracle stable? See next point...
3. 'Breaking a nut with a beautiful yet powerful diamond tipped auto-targetting smashing device which very few people seem to know how to use': Why not use a nut cracker? In finance, my field, object-orientated programming is fantastic, models are always evolving, we can re-build a module to increase speed sophictication and add more to add scope, no OOP would mean someone would invent it. Is it necessary to have OOP to calculate cash flows and valuations... *buzz* no! Legal and accounting regulations change now and again meaning an update is necessary, but trade-off 0 development time (because a system is in place) plus a little refining, against creating an entire new system from scratch! The analyst who rebuilds a complex project from scratch is one who must ask hard if it was necessary or they're trying to fit something into their ideological framework, which leads to:
4. Insufficient developer skill. Even if the project is well defined and management is good, you still need people to program intelligently. C-tree is pretty efficient and straightforward once the initial work of understanding the data is carried out - the effort is front-loaded. SQL is the reverse: the language is dead simple as is understandingthe data, the trouble many programmers have is writing efficient algorithms, I often see a procedure with a subquery iterating many times on the results of an intial query (often with a new database connection being made every query!) when some simple (for someone who knows it) refinement of code would increase the speed 100 times+. SQL and relational databases dumb down programming as many dumbed-down people join the profession and poor quality results. THis applies to the Perl-monk who writes 95% of a complex system in a day and can't be bothered/forgets what they've done and cannot decypher the code they wrote themselves. It also applies to (earlier point) programmers/developers who cannot see past OOP: sometimes OOP is a poor choice not for a simple project but a complex one, the best example I can think of is array programming, many OOPers just don't get it and write damn slow inefficient code and are unwilling to learn any other skill.
Quite a rant, I apologise. I suppose I mean, look at your own abilities, are you reinventing a system because the existing one doesn't fit in your skill set or is there a genuine need? If the need really is genuine then perhaps you don't have to reinvent the system, just add a partial GUI when users click on menus o
Perhaps you don't appreciate the extent some companies will go to in order to keep things secret.
The quantum crypto links aren't in service yet, but they are in testing/integration and have communications flowing over them.
For really secret stuff some companies don't even use conventional security now, still relying on encrypted data on a floppy disk (yes 1.44MB 3.5 inch) inside a (boobytrapped to destroy the floppy) locked briefcase chained to the arm of an armed guard who sits in the back of an armed van which, when the information is really really secret, has a police escort. And when you think about it seriously, that is not hugely secure.
There are some things some organisations do to keep information which is literally worth hundreds of billions of dollars, and yes that is larger than the market cap of microsoft.
If you don't include Outlook (well, this is corporate, so the comparison is Exchange, an entirely different beast from Outlook) in the comparison?! Sure look at the competition but compare feature with feature, I found this article odd that they didn't objectively review the target: Outlook/Exchange
My Take on Exchange
As much as I dislike Outlook as an email client, it is an OK email/shared calender/shared resource platform.
My company used to use Novell Groupwise which was OK from a user perspective but not great. Now we use Exchange and it is mainly better from a user perspective (the odd thing is inferior, like new email alerts).
I have email, I have a calender on a personal, group, ad-hoc group and organisational basis, I have easy integration with my mobile phone/PDA, I have easy integration with out document mnagement system. It is all easy from a user perspective.
Exchange admins do their job well, security and network personnel find it an improvement as easy to look after. Sure there is a charge, but seamless operation for users and a straightforward system for admins is worth paying for. Lock-in? They're all plain text/HTML emails and saved/transferrable as such, the calender is exportable as plain text - pretty OK compared to the properitery nature of Excel or VBA macros, something to make more of a fuss about.
The 'editors choice': It would be absolutely great if Thunderbird had a decent calender and PIM, Mozilla is great. But at the moment it doesn't even have a daemon to alert of appointments. What a joke. I use Firebird as my home-based web client. I do not use it, or feel the need for it, in an organisation which parses every packet for malicious code, has many full time security and network professionals and stays on the cutting edge of security. Sure not day0, but that's the definition. Think about the user: I am a user with an IT skill/interest but not operational function, I'm happy about that.
Perhaps my company is one of the better of the pack, we even have quantum crypto links with affiliates. But we are 'enterprise' and Exhange/Outlook offers an excellent deal and little lock in, which is good enough.
1. They made a model which seemed nice from a theoretical basis. 2. They simulated it. 3. They got a massive residual 4. They thought "oh crap, that didn't work, how can we justify our funding... lets say it fundamentally affects the evolution of the universe and formation of black holes, that should double our funding!" 5. Profit!
Before share split: 50,000 shares own a company. Compant has $1m earnings, makes $20/share earnings
Stock splits 2:1 but company fundamentals stay the same (simplisitc, but no reason splits affect the earnings of a company). ,br>
Company still earns $1m. But not t has 100,000 shares that makes it $10/share. If shares are values on a fundamental basis it makes no difference. If shares are viewed on a tachnical basis (see technincal analysis, the opposite of 'fundamental analysis') it also makes no difference as price charts auto-adjust splits.
The reason share prices may react positively to share splits is because it increases lqiuidity in shares (lower prices making them more accessible to small-time retail mom-and-pop investors who may just buy 1 or 2 shares, though this is less so in an era of mutual fund saving), or as ait signals to investors that management are tuned into them - just a communication/signalling mechanism. It may also trigger second-thing-n guessing of other investors betting against each other's reactions, but this is market-situation rather than company speculation.
Share splits are the result of good news and really not good news in themselves.
My bank given away anti-virus software with its internet banking service.
And not clarify this good service:
I'm not some super earner with gold cards spewing out of my wallet, I'm just a regular graduate student at MIT
Yes it does run on Linux (on WINE infact)
My internet banking works even though I don't run Window$
IMHO, internet banking is an extremely liberating use of technology. No longer do I have to queue in line for 30mins to clarify my statement, talk over a _totally insecure_ telephone line (just who could be listening?), or speak about personal details which someone could clearly, and probably does, eavesdrop on, 128-bit security to the rescue!
You're right firewalls help, but running an anti-virus program (Windows), staying in user-mode (anyone sensable) and taking reasonable precautions should be enough. As a side-point I recently upgraded my firewall (P100 box) from an ad-hoc FreeBSD build to an optimised home-cook Linux one and it ROCKS in performance and (because I know the system) security gains.
There are 2 versions to history: 'recent' and 'back in the day'. Recently, during and after the.com boom both consumers and employees were screwed over by neat ideas being implemented poorly by what were old-tech companies which had failed to adapt. Truely back-in-the-day we could walk into a branch, get met with a friendly face, have a chat about circumstances and not have to wait around. While the export of tech jobs to India is hurting us remember the root (lol!) cause is money grubbing corporates treating you/us as $$$ not as people
So yeah, perhaps my bank give away AV while technology because it means they're less likely to be sued. Personally I'd find it less bother to take peoper security precautions than go through court sueing someone, and while I do have some fondness for the truely old days perhaps banks are really starting to use the benefits of technology
However you say "I'm not that interested in the script kiddies that write the software..." we'll they're better than the average script kiddie!
This makes me question the hierarachy. Sure script kiddies use programs written by others, in rare cases they may also get day0 scripts. But to what extent is their a hierarchy in DDOS, Spammer or general botnets, and to what extent is it organised in cells largely or totally independent in operation? Some bot-creation and cracking networks, from the best of my knowledge from what I pick up, are professional criminals who have turned their hands to this as its low-risk high-yield compared to drug running or prostitution and they have access to a relative advantage: there is some hierarchy? There are several well established gangs in Eastern Europe doing that, and other places I'm sure too. Questions:
How well are the gangs linked up?
Are they insulated from each other (deliberately or because paths haven't crossed)?
Will we see them in competition soon and in what form will this competition be in?
Some really interesting stuff for criminal research, me thinks.
That's really interesting, good to hear you yielded your power when you left instead of being shat upon! Must have been a bit of satisfaction after that diappointment.
I suppose I've got all this to look forward to, there are only 5 of us in front office (we're an in house investment manager running a pension fund) and I've started looking for something somewhere else so I can dig my teeth into what I enjoy and am good at a but more. I think I'm sensing that frustrating attitude you describe - its the CFA in my case: there are far better things to learn given 20 hours/week to than poor statistical techniques, incorrect economics and GAAP, yet somehow the CFA is a 'gold standard'.
Well I like to dip my toes into a lot of things... we're pretty informal about proving something though, data-snooping abound, in the end its a trade-off with good model and using it soon enough to take advantage.
NNs are such a nightmare though - so much to define and specify - useful and lots of 'value added' but so far no program trade to make me a squillionaire;)
Why did you call it quits and move on anyway? Once you're broken through as a quant there's quite a nice package as long as you keep up the chirade...
Well, I'm the economist who has a math bent! So much is blindly assumed as you mentioed earlier.
But perhaps we're talking at cross-purposes. I agree almost all finance houses rely on the qualatitive 'economic' view point (despite price moves orthogonal to 'fundamentals' echo second, third, etc order guessing of the market), but many are using 'optimisation' methods in terms of NNs and possibly fractals or even kernels. I'm just a beginner with only 3 years under my belt but as far as I can see on the sell side its becomming common place to use this in FI portfolios (and FX), less so in equities (I'm buy side).
I'm interested in what you say about the past, in terms of quant I know MS used NNs and what are still some pretty bleeding edge techniques 10-15 years ago, even though it was with limited success.
Stochastic modelling;) I can present an analysis of Brownian vs. fractal vols to my CIO and he'll say: "What was the 3 month performance? I think this is wrong because I had lunch with so-and-so political hasbeen with a name far surpassing track record and agree with what they said"! Then he'll start quoting Sharpe ratios on payoff which bear similarity to the lottery test.
Oh well! A lot of the old prop-desks have left their parents to form as hedge funds now, which is a good thing for the progress of quanity vs. pragmaticism, IMHO.
For finance, I was relating to the absolute use rather than calcs finance cos do rel to other techniques - I suppose NNs to weather covered the spectrum.
But what bit of finance are you in? It's the quanatitive vs. qualitative argument when quant is qual based but specification of the quant means a lot (as it does with mathematical techniques including NNs in general), and that is qual in the end. For PE then it is all in the business assessment, but semi-academic minds which grace Ivy Leagues and Wall Street fare poorly in terms of NVA.
Most major FI models use NNs as a tool do add colour to their model, they are extremely common in large finance houses or even just semi-quant niche houses. Not that NNs are used for predicting prices, but I'd prefer a NN/fractal model and Econ grad to add the qual. than a Harvard MBA and quants using brownian models. I've been very successful using fractals to trade vols.
With demographic representation of the population. Survey may be interview based (less biases but harder) or they ask/sponsor/pay you to install a 'spy box' on your TV for 2 weeks (some bias with who agrees but they try to neutralise it).
Most companies, unless they are pharm or bio, won't really have any use for this.
Financial mining and oil companies will have a HUGE use for this: mining for geology, oil for fluids and financial pricing, financials, obviously, for financial pricing (ranging from neural nets to weather).
So once we've stripped out pharma, bio, oil, mining, financials... there aren't many large company industries left! Plus, I'm really interested how academia will take to this.
Read "under the reigns of Linux" as "under the reigns of IBM". Here follows the ammended post:
Haha, how cynical! But given they're in competition and not collusion with IBM (for now) plus the 'traditional solutions', perhaps that is second order in their minds.
Where this is going of course, as the article touches on, is the commoditisation of raw computing power, making it a product like iron ore, coal or oil. Genericism will, IMHO, be a really interesting force behind evolution of computational techniques over the next 10 years.
With genericism perhaps there can be no monopoly in provision of computing power, or more specifically for Sun, there is genericism until we get to the buts-and-bolts Solaris and then we get a monopoly in proven scalable OSes and as long as they can hold off Linux snapping at their heels under the reigns of IBM, then they'll have their monopoly and that is step 4; which leaves holding off Linix presumably as step 3, just you forgot to denote it '???'.
Haha, how cynical! But given they're in competition and not collusion with IBM (for now) plus the 'traditional solutions', perhaps that is second order in their minds.
Where this is going of course, as the article touches on, is the commoditisation of raw computing power, making it a product like iron ore, coal or oil. Genericism will, IMHO, be a really interesting force behind evolution of computational techniques over the next 10 years.
With genericism perhaps there can be no monopoly in provision of computing power, or more specifically for Sun, there is genericism until we get to the buts-and-bolts Solaris and then we get a monopoly in proven scalable OSes and as long as they can hold off Linux snapping at their heels under the reigns of Linux, then they'll have their monopoly and that is step 4; which leaves holding off Linix presumably as step 3, just you forgot to denote it '???'.
Slashdot Mirror
The £38mn is to build the machine. It is in 1-time use for 56 hours.
There are 8776 hours in a year. Assume the machine has a life of 3 years before it becomes obselete. That means (discouting TVM at 0% for simplicity) the machine can do 470 problems of this type in three years, breaking even at a little over $80 per problem.
Damn that just got a lot lot cheaper.
Dude, I may be the first to point this out:
While the bumbers are only 11 difference yes, 69 is a much slower method for most 80, though I'm not sure its 2000 either.
I live in central London (one of the highest density places in the world) and am unable, to buy Pizza Hut pizza because (all the areas on the website claim to but telephone operators deny it) they fail to deliver to my area. Friends in other areas on London also experience the same problem: more areas seem undeliverable than deliverable.
Nothing like advertising on London regional channels when you rarely deliver there for a waste of money. Everquest, well I don't care, now a Pizza Hut clan on Counterstrike, well they'd be the terrorists with bellied which ran slowely and couldn't think straight from constipation.
DEC VAX.
Perferably emulated under Windows.
You may laugh but it is to-the-point, simple to use and with the emulator the user can have a windowed environment.
DEC databases,b-tree, c-tree, whatever, built in the 80s still run business critical systems today. They are accurate, staff use them without any problems. These days a business-oritntated database promotes itself as being 'extensable' but if you get a life cycle of over 3 years you're lucky.
IT consultancy gone mad. Two-bit programmers learn object-orientated programming and SQL at university 'Computer Science' courses. Fantastic, interesting stuff. But them they reinvent a wheel re-creating a system which already existed but 'adding a nicer GUI and greated extendability'. Examples:
1. 'User-firendlyness': A user wants to run a pre-existing report. Is it better to load a lightening-fast console, press 2 to get a report menu and 3 to choose the report, or is it better to load a slow windowed application click on 'reports' menu and choose the purple and green icon. Indifferent? Then why is it better to create a new system? Plus the users will have to be trained on the new one. If you really want to have a windowed system a WM can be strapped on to an existing code base, it is not necessary to reinvent the wheel. 2. 'Stability': DEC VAX as stable, a computer in my office which runs business-critical accounts has been 'always on' for over 5 years. SQL server stable? Oracle stable? See next point...
3. 'Breaking a nut with a beautiful yet powerful diamond tipped auto-targetting smashing device which very few people seem to know how to use': Why not use a nut cracker? In finance, my field, object-orientated programming is fantastic, models are always evolving, we can re-build a module to increase speed sophictication and add more to add scope, no OOP would mean someone would invent it. Is it necessary to have OOP to calculate cash flows and valuations... *buzz* no! Legal and accounting regulations change now and again meaning an update is necessary, but trade-off 0 development time (because a system is in place) plus a little refining, against creating an entire new system from scratch! The analyst who rebuilds a complex project from scratch is one who must ask hard if it was necessary or they're trying to fit something into their ideological framework, which leads to:
4. Insufficient developer skill. Even if the project is well defined and management is good, you still need people to program intelligently. C-tree is pretty efficient and straightforward once the initial work of understanding the data is carried out - the effort is front-loaded. SQL is the reverse: the language is dead simple as is understandingthe data, the trouble many programmers have is writing efficient algorithms, I often see a procedure with a subquery iterating many times on the results of an intial query (often with a new database connection being made every query!) when some simple (for someone who knows it) refinement of code would increase the speed 100 times+. SQL and relational databases dumb down programming as many dumbed-down people join the profession and poor quality results. THis applies to the Perl-monk who writes 95% of a complex system in a day and can't be bothered/forgets what they've done and cannot decypher the code they wrote themselves. It also applies to (earlier point) programmers/developers who cannot see past OOP: sometimes OOP is a poor choice not for a simple project but a complex one, the best example I can think of is array programming, many OOPers just don't get it and write damn slow inefficient code and are unwilling to learn any other skill.
Quite a rant, I apologise. I suppose I mean, look at your own abilities, are you reinventing a system because the existing one doesn't fit in your skill set or is there a genuine need? If the need really is genuine then perhaps you don't have to reinvent the system, just add a partial GUI when users click on menus o
Perhaps you don't appreciate the extent some companies will go to in order to keep things secret.
The quantum crypto links aren't in service yet, but they are in testing/integration and have communications flowing over them.
For really secret stuff some companies don't even use conventional security now, still relying on encrypted data on a floppy disk (yes 1.44MB 3.5 inch) inside a (boobytrapped to destroy the floppy) locked briefcase chained to the arm of an armed guard who sits in the back of an armed van which, when the information is really really secret, has a police escort. And when you think about it seriously, that is not hugely secure.
There are some things some organisations do to keep information which is literally worth hundreds of billions of dollars, and yes that is larger than the market cap of microsoft.
If you don't include Outlook (well, this is corporate, so the comparison is Exchange, an entirely different beast from Outlook) in the comparison?! Sure look at the competition but compare feature with feature, I found this article odd that they didn't objectively review the target: Outlook/Exchange
My Take on Exchange
As much as I dislike Outlook as an email client, it is an OK email/shared calender/shared resource platform.
My company used to use Novell Groupwise which was OK from a user perspective but not great. Now we use Exchange and it is mainly better from a user perspective (the odd thing is inferior, like new email alerts).
I have email, I have a calender on a personal, group, ad-hoc group and organisational basis, I have easy integration with my mobile phone/PDA, I have easy integration with out document mnagement system. It is all easy from a user perspective.
Exchange admins do their job well, security and network personnel find it an improvement as easy to look after.
Sure there is a charge, but seamless operation for users and a straightforward system for admins is worth paying for.
Lock-in? They're all plain text/HTML emails and saved/transferrable as such, the calender is exportable as plain text - pretty OK compared to the properitery nature of Excel or VBA macros, something to make more of a fuss about.
The 'editors choice': It would be absolutely great if Thunderbird had a decent calender and PIM, Mozilla is great. But at the moment it doesn't even have a daemon to alert of appointments. What a joke.
I use Firebird as my home-based web client. I do not use it, or feel the need for it, in an organisation which parses every packet for malicious code, has many full time security and network professionals and stays on the cutting edge of security. Sure not day0, but that's the definition.
Think about the user: I am a user with an IT skill/interest but not operational function, I'm happy about that.
Perhaps my company is one of the better of the pack, we even have quantum crypto links with affiliates. But we are 'enterprise' and Exhange/Outlook offers an excellent deal and little lock in, which is good enough.
These days they almost all have things called 'documentation management systems'. My one uses Worksite, everything remotely accessable.
1. They made a model which seemed nice from a theoretical basis.
2. They simulated it.
3. They got a massive residual
4. They thought "oh crap, that didn't work, how can we justify our funding... lets say it fundamentally affects the evolution of the universe and formation of black holes, that should double our funding!"
5. Profit!
Share splits:
Before share split: 50,000 shares own a company. Compant has $1m earnings, makes $20/share earnings
Stock splits 2:1 but company fundamentals stay the same (simplisitc, but no reason splits affect the earnings of a company).
,br> Company still earns $1m. But not t has 100,000 shares that makes it $10/share. If shares are values on a fundamental basis it makes no difference. If shares are viewed on a tachnical basis (see technincal analysis, the opposite of 'fundamental analysis') it also makes no difference as price charts auto-adjust splits.
The reason share prices may react positively to share splits is because it increases lqiuidity in shares (lower prices making them more accessible to small-time retail mom-and-pop investors who may just buy 1 or 2 shares, though this is less so in an era of mutual fund saving), or as ait signals to investors that management are tuned into them - just a communication/signalling mechanism. It may also trigger second-thing-n guessing of other investors betting against each other's reactions, but this is market-situation rather than company speculation.
Share splits are the result of good news and really not good news in themselves.
...I doubt the pyramids were filled with GPS to prevent their obscelesence.
...You need a group of 12 terrorists to defeat a team of 12 CTs with CT-47s and a bomb! Wallhack, speedhack and autoaim help.
And not clarify this good service:
I'm not some super earner with gold cards spewing out of my wallet, I'm just a regular graduate student at MIT
Yes it does run on Linux (on WINE infact)
My internet banking works even though I don't run Window$
IMHO, internet banking is an extremely liberating use of technology. No longer do I have to queue in line for 30mins to clarify my statement, talk over a _totally insecure_ telephone line (just who could be listening?), or speak about personal details which someone could clearly, and probably does, eavesdrop on, 128-bit security to the rescue!
You're right firewalls help, but running an anti-virus program (Windows), staying in user-mode (anyone sensable) and taking reasonable precautions should be enough. As a side-point I recently upgraded my firewall (P100 box) from an ad-hoc FreeBSD build to an optimised home-cook Linux one and it ROCKS in performance and (because I know the system) security gains.
There are 2 versions to history: 'recent' and 'back in the day'. Recently, during and after the .com boom both consumers and employees were screwed over by neat ideas being implemented poorly by what were old-tech companies which had failed to adapt. Truely back-in-the-day we could walk into a branch, get met with a friendly face, have a chat about circumstances and not have to wait around. While the export of tech jobs to India is hurting us remember the root (lol!) cause is money grubbing corporates treating you/us as $$$ not as people
So yeah, perhaps my bank give away AV while technology because it means they're less likely to be sued. Personally I'd find it less bother to take peoper security precautions than go through court sueing someone, and while I do have some fondness for the truely old days perhaps banks are really starting to use the benefits of technology
This makes me question the hierarachy. Sure script kiddies use programs written by others, in rare cases they may also get day0 scripts. But to what extent is their a hierarchy in DDOS, Spammer or general botnets, and to what extent is it organised in cells largely or totally independent in operation? Some bot-creation and cracking networks, from the best of my knowledge from what I pick up, are professional criminals who have turned their hands to this as its low-risk high-yield compared to drug running or prostitution and they have access to a relative advantage: there is some hierarchy? There are several well established gangs in Eastern Europe doing that, and other places I'm sure too. Questions:
How well are the gangs linked up?
Are they insulated from each other (deliberately or because paths haven't crossed)?
Will we see them in competition soon and in what form will this competition be in?
Some really interesting stuff for criminal research, me thinks.
That's really interesting, good to hear you yielded your power when you left instead of being shat upon! Must have been a bit of satisfaction after that diappointment.
I suppose I've got all this to look forward to, there are only 5 of us in front office (we're an in house investment manager running a pension fund) and I've started looking for something somewhere else so I can dig my teeth into what I enjoy and am good at a but more. I think I'm sensing that frustrating attitude you describe - its the CFA in my case: there are far better things to learn given 20 hours/week to than poor statistical techniques, incorrect economics and GAAP, yet somehow the CFA is a 'gold standard'.
All the best.
Well I like to dip my toes into a lot of things... we're pretty informal about proving something though, data-snooping abound, in the end its a trade-off with good model and using it soon enough to take advantage.
;)
NNs are such a nightmare though - so much to define and specify - useful and lots of 'value added' but so far no program trade to make me a squillionaire
Why did you call it quits and move on anyway? Once you're broken through as a quant there's quite a nice package as long as you keep up the chirade...
Well, I'm the economist who has a math bent! So much is blindly assumed as you mentioed earlier.
;) I can present an analysis of Brownian vs. fractal vols to my CIO and he'll say: "What was the 3 month performance? I think this is wrong because I had lunch with so-and-so political hasbeen with a name far surpassing track record and agree with what they said"! Then he'll start quoting Sharpe ratios on payoff which bear similarity to the lottery test.
But perhaps we're talking at cross-purposes. I agree almost all finance houses rely on the qualatitive 'economic' view point (despite price moves orthogonal to 'fundamentals' echo second, third, etc order guessing of the market), but many are using 'optimisation' methods in terms of NNs and possibly fractals or even kernels. I'm just a beginner with only 3 years under my belt but as far as I can see on the sell side its becomming common place to use this in FI portfolios (and FX), less so in equities (I'm buy side).
I'm interested in what you say about the past, in terms of quant I know MS used NNs and what are still some pretty bleeding edge techniques 10-15 years ago, even though it was with limited success.
Stochastic modelling
Oh well! A lot of the old prop-desks have left their parents to form as hedge funds now, which is a good thing for the progress of quanity vs. pragmaticism, IMHO.
For finance, I was relating to the absolute use rather than calcs finance cos do rel to other techniques - I suppose NNs to weather covered the spectrum.
But what bit of finance are you in? It's the quanatitive vs. qualitative argument when quant is qual based but specification of the quant means a lot (as it does with mathematical techniques including NNs in general), and that is qual in the end. For PE then it is all in the business assessment, but semi-academic minds which grace Ivy Leagues and Wall Street fare poorly in terms of NVA.
Most major FI models use NNs as a tool do add colour to their model, they are extremely common in large finance houses or even just semi-quant niche houses. Not that NNs are used for predicting prices, but I'd prefer a NN/fractal model and Econ grad to add the qual. than a Harvard MBA and quants using brownian models. I've been very successful using fractals to trade vols.
With demographic representation of the population. Survey may be interview based (less biases but harder) or they ask/sponsor/pay you to install a 'spy box' on your TV for 2 weeks (some bias with who agrees but they try to neutralise it).
Scott Bakula is so awesome.
n/t
Most companies, unless they are pharm or bio, won't really have any use for this.
Financial mining and oil companies will have a HUGE use for this: mining for geology, oil for fluids and financial pricing, financials, obviously, for financial pricing (ranging from neural nets to weather).
So once we've stripped out pharma, bio, oil, mining, financials... there aren't many large company industries left! Plus, I'm really interested how academia will take to this.
Read "under the reigns of Linux" as "under the reigns of IBM". Here follows the ammended post:
Haha, how cynical! But given they're in competition and not collusion with IBM (for now) plus the 'traditional solutions', perhaps that is second order in their minds.
Where this is going of course, as the article touches on, is the commoditisation of raw computing power, making it a product like iron ore, coal or oil. Genericism will, IMHO, be a really interesting force behind evolution of computational techniques over the next 10 years.
With genericism perhaps there can be no monopoly in provision of computing power, or more specifically for Sun, there is genericism until we get to the buts-and-bolts Solaris and then we get a monopoly in proven scalable OSes and as long as they can hold off Linux snapping at their heels under the reigns of IBM, then they'll have their monopoly and that is step 4; which leaves holding off Linix presumably as step 3, just you forgot to denote it '???'.
Haha, how cynical! But given they're in competition and not collusion with IBM (for now) plus the 'traditional solutions', perhaps that is second order in their minds.
Where this is going of course, as the article touches on, is the commoditisation of raw computing power, making it a product like iron ore, coal or oil. Genericism will, IMHO, be a really interesting force behind evolution of computational techniques over the next 10 years.
With genericism perhaps there can be no monopoly in provision of computing power, or more specifically for Sun, there is genericism until we get to the buts-and-bolts Solaris and then we get a monopoly in proven scalable OSes and as long as they can hold off Linux snapping at their heels under the reigns of Linux, then they'll have their monopoly and that is step 4; which leaves holding off Linix presumably as step 3, just you forgot to denote it '???'.
I don't enjoy movies that much where you have to shoot 8 bullets from a gun into a guy before he dies(from pistols).
Then stop shooting them in their feet.
Only if it's being driven by an old korean...
...in Japan!