Do It Yourself Masters in Financial Engineering • Hacker News Board

Re: Do It Yourself Masters in Financial Engineering

#21

Post by bosie » Sat, Jan 22, 2011, 5:58 PM UTC

joshkaufman wrote: post #11

kmfrk wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give yourself some credit for going through 99+ books, though; if something doesn't sink in after all that, then you should reconsider the way you read. :)

It wasn't just 99 - it was thousands. The books on the list are just the best. :-)

thousands? if your average book has 300 pages, and you read 30 pages per hour, you would need to read for 10000 hours, doing it for 8 hours a day you need 1250 days. that's without repeating anything of course. am i wrong? in what timespan did you read those thousands of books?

Re: Do It Yourself Masters in Financial Engineering

#22

Post by thebigredjay » Sat, Jan 22, 2011, 5:58 PM UTC

joshkaufman wrote: post #11

kmfrk wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give yourself some credit for going through 99+ books, though; if something doesn't sink in after all that, then you should reconsider the way you read. :)

It wasn't just 99 - it was thousands. The books on the list are just the best. :-)

I like the idea of reading ridiculous amounts of things more than reading one thing ridiculous amounts of times.

Re: Do It Yourself Masters in Financial Engineering

#23

Post by dagw » Sat, Jan 22, 2011, 6:11 PM UTC

bosie wrote: post #21

joshkaufman wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wasn't just 99 - it was thousands. The books on the list are just the best. :-)

thousands? if your average book has 300 pages, and you read 30 pages per hour, you would need to read for 10000 hours, doing it for 8 hours a day you need 1250 days. that's without repeating anything of course. am i wrong? in what timespan did you read those thousands of books?

I'm not the original poster, but I've found that most 300 page business books contain 10-20 pages of useful info and 280-290 pages of fluff and filler. I generally skim through the average business book in an hour or 2, including the time to make notes of all the potentially useful advice I find. It's rare to find a business book worth carefully reading cover to cover.

Re: Do It Yourself Masters in Financial Engineering

#24

Post by gahahaha » Sat, Jan 22, 2011, 6:17 PM UTC

"""But you pay someone to indoctrinate you with exactly the same methods and formulae that all of your competitors are using. Then you expect to come to not just a different conclusion, but a market-beating conclusion? That just sounds dumb."""

Counter argument: Creativity entails not only novelty (that outside the box stuff) but also utility, and in order to be useful, it has to go above-and-beyond what is already known (that inside the box stuff). It's about embracing what's been done before, because it's practice that gives us the capacity to build on the old ideas to make the new.

If you never venture outside the box, you will probably not be creative. But if you never get inside the box, you will certainly be stupid.

Re: Do It Yourself Masters in Financial Engineering

#25

Post by dagw » Sat, Jan 22, 2011, 6:18 PM UTC

nerfhammer wrote: post #6

I'll just leave this here: http://www.khanacademy.org/

Khan academy, while great, doesn't really go beyond advanced high school-simple first year university level. There is nothing there which is even close to Masters level.

Re: Do It Yourself Masters in Financial Engineering

#26

Post by gatsby » Sat, Jan 22, 2011, 6:27 PM UTC

iwwr wrote: post #19

noname123 wrote: post #12

DIY Financial Engineering: 1. Sign up for an Interactive Brokers account; state that you want to trade options. 2. Transfer >25K (day-trading capability) or whatever is reasonable amount money for you. Enough for you to care about but not over the amount where if you lost it all, you'd lose sleep over. 3. Now use the highest/lowest volatility scanner and buy/sell some options randomly in that list; max out your real…

DIY Financian Engineering Lite Edition (TM) 1. Go to Las Vegas 2. Transfer >25K in chips (high-roller capability), or whatever is reasonable amount of money for you 3. Play the tables 4. Figure out what the fuck you're doing while you're doing it 5. If you get over step 4, you probably think you have a solid strategy for winning against a casino. Now, automate the task by getting people to pay you for your new book/D…

"When I was young, people called me a gambler. As the scale of my operations grew, I became known as a speculator. Now, they call me a banker. I have been doing the same thing all along." -Sir Ernest Cassel

Re: Do It Yourself Masters in Financial Engineering

#27

Post by joshkaufman » Sat, Jan 22, 2011, 6:33 PM UTC

dagw wrote: post #23

bosie wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

thousands? if your average book has 300 pages, and you read 30 pages per hour, you would need to read for 10000 hours, doing it for 8 hours a day you need 1250 days. that's without repeating anything of course. am i wrong? in what timespan did you read those thousands of books?

I'm not the original poster, but I've found that most 300 page business books contain 10-20 pages of useful info and 280-290 pages of fluff and filler. I generally skim through the average business book in an hour or 2, including the time to make notes of all the potentially useful advice I find. It's rare to find a business book worth carefully reading cover to cover.

That's exactly what I do, only I've practiced enough to cut the time per book to 10-20 minutes, depending on complexity. Reading for information extraction vs. word-for-word is much more efficient, and if you practice, your comprehension and retention is just as high.

It's not uncommon for me to go to the library or B&N and read a stack of 20-30 books in a few hours. I've been reading business books for six years, and easily read 200-400 books a year.

Here's a post I wrote on effective non-fiction reading techniques, for more info on the approach: http://personalmba.com/10-days-to-faster-reading/

Re: Do It Yourself Masters in Financial Engineering

#28

Post by fuzzythinker » Sat, Jan 22, 2011, 6:48 PM UTC

joshkaufman wrote: post #3

This is exactly what I did with business, instead of getting an MBA or a PhD. Here's my reading list: http://personalmba.com/best-business-books/ Here's the book I wrote, condensing what I learned in the process: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1591843529/ I now own my own business, work for myself as a business teacher and consultant, have an enormous amount of flexibility in my day-to-day schedule, and make more t…

Wow, incredible reviews, just picked up a copy ;)

Re: Do It Yourself Masters in Financial Engineering

#29

Post by bryanh » Sat, Jan 22, 2011, 6:48 PM UTC

jteo wrote: post #17

You go and get a Masters because of 2 reasons 1. Signalling to your future employer / Getting past the HR filter. 2. Networking with others. Learning something useful is usually a bonus.

Or, if you are like me, include #3: Plenty of time to build side-projects and experiment with products that you hope will grow into something substantial by graduation.

Re: Do It Yourself Masters in Financial Engineering

#30

Post by joe_the_user » Sat, Jan 22, 2011, 6:51 PM UTC

gahahaha wrote: post #24

"""But you pay someone to indoctrinate you with exactly the same methods and formulae that all of your competitors are using. Then you expect to come to not just a different conclusion, but a market-beating conclusion? That just sounds dumb.""" Counter argument: Creativity entails not only novelty (that outside the box stuff) but also utility, and in order to be useful, it has to go above-and-beyond what is already k…

Indeed,

If you never get inside the box, you won't even know what the box means or what "outside the box" means.