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School for quants - Inside UCL's Financial Computing Centre

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Re: School for quants - Inside UCL's Financial Computing Centre

#21

Post by SkyMarshal »

dustineichler wrote: post #8
chrisaycock wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're looking for quant schools in New York? There are tons of those. The most common degree is the Master of Financial Engineering or equivalent. QuantNet maintains a list of the top programs in the US: https://www.quantnet.com/mfe-programs-rankings/ But you should think very carefully about whether starting a new degree like this is worth it. Firstly, you'll notice that the tuition for all of these programs is ver…

I should've said "unschool". Mia culpa. There's no way I'd go back for another degree at this point. I just might be interested in finance related programming.

Wilmott's Certificate in Quantitative Finance is the way to go in your case:

http://wilmott.com/cqf.cfm

http://www.portfolio.com/executives/features/2008/08/13/Paul...

Re: School for quants - Inside UCL's Financial Computing Centre

#22

Post by SkyMarshal »

inetsee wrote: post #3

This is a duplicate of a post that appeared four days ago. I thought the HN software caught duplicates like this.

It catches duplicates only if they're identical, which they're not in this case. Same article, slight differences in the link querystring.

Re: School for quants - Inside UCL's Financial Computing Centre

#23

Post by SkyMarshal »

Wishful thinking, but I would love to see scientists like these searching for computational solutions to either stabilizing the financial system, or robustifying it and its essential ecosystem (government, banking, lending) against inevitable, reflexive instability.

I wish they'd take a step up the hierarchy of needs from simply trying to find ways to make more money by predicting the future, to instantiating a safer, more robust, more resilient global economic system.

If their funding and earnings need to be guaranteed by governments instead of offered by industry in order to incent and achieve that shift, then so be it. When the entire world and the lives of everyone in it is your lab because it's too complex for isolated simulation and testing, then re-evaluation of your priorities and conflicts of interest is in order.

Re: School for quants - Inside UCL's Financial Computing Centre

#24

Post by ovi256 »

The article was very interesting, with the exception of the occasional technical non-sense that made it suspect. I'm talking about things like: “Personally,” he replied, “I would run the connectors outside the cloud machine.” "her boss mentioned that he could never work out the simultaneous price and position of a trade" - price and position ? - this sounds like something written by someone who heard about Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Then "a cosine formula from physics useful for measuring electromagnetic waves", yup, sure sounds smart.

Re: School for quants - Inside UCL's Financial Computing Centre

#25

Post by SkyMarshal »

siavosh wrote: post #14

Oh boy, the financial wizard porn articles are being peddled again, right when the markets are supposedly OK. I hope we all don't have such short term memories.

Markets aren't ok. "What’s really going on is something akin to an evenly matched tug of war that fails to move the ribbon tied around the center of the rope, giving the impression of harmony while powerful forces do silent battle until someone slips." [1]

1. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a...

Re: School for quants - Inside UCL's Financial Computing Centre

#26

Post by elchief »

comm_it wrote: post #12
elchief wrote: post #10

that's cool and all, but it seems like a waste of talent to learn all that stuff to shuffle money around and occasionally destroy the world economy. it's interesting that it's 80 percent men. it's obviously going to be very lucrative.

In what way is it a waste of talent? Additionally, how are they occasionally destroying the world's economy?

Are you kidding? Did you miss the whole 2008 financial crisis? The quants thought the could control risk, but couldn't.

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-03/wp_quant?curr...

It's a waste of resources as moving paper around does not contribute to economic growth, whereas say spending time and energy on AI or nano might.

Re: School for quants - Inside UCL's Financial Computing Centre

#27

Post by jamesbritt »

inetsee wrote: post #3

This is a duplicate of a post that appeared four days ago. I thought the HN software caught duplicates like this.

Dupe-catcher seems to treat fragment IDs as defining a unique URL:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3667166

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3685113

In fact, out of curiosity I tried to submit the story once again by munging the fragment ID. And was able to:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3687267

Re: School for quants - Inside UCL's Financial Computing Centre

#28

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #20
disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #5

The main idea when you become a quant is that a computer is less prone to pitfalls than a human. Computers and humans are prone to different pitfalls. Humans have far too many biases to count - see for example, the works of Kahneman and Tversky and most of social psychology. Computers, on the other hand come with a whole host of different problems (perhaps because they're made by humans). The essential advantage a hu…

> The essential advantage a human has is the eye, which is extremely well adapted to picking out patterns. I'm not sure that's an advantage. The human eye is so good at discerning patterns that it sees them even where they do not exist. Witness: technical analysis, Eliot Wave Theory, etc. Quants use math to provide a more rigorous framework for eliminating hocus pocus like that, though they have been known to make le…

I really wouldn't call picking out patterns by eye as hocus pocus, I see where you're coming from, but I find (in my own work) that a good graph can help me to understand a model. Again, this does play into the biases of humans, but given enough awareness of these, the intersection of algorithms to find automatic patterns and the ability of the human eye and mind to discern meaning and give interpretation to these patterns is a very powerful combination.

Re: School for quants - Inside UCL's Financial Computing Centre

#29

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

mdda wrote: post #11
disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #5

The main idea when you become a quant is that a computer is less prone to pitfalls than a human. Computers and humans are prone to different pitfalls. Humans have far too many biases to count - see for example, the works of Kahneman and Tversky and most of social psychology. Computers, on the other hand come with a whole host of different problems (perhaps because they're made by humans). The essential advantage a hu…

One of the things about financial markets is that large numbers of people are attempting to spot patterns, and eek out a profit from the patterns repeating. People are very good at this - which means that, over time, the number of profitable patterns reduces. Thus, to human eyes, market behaviour becomes noise : just like zip compression reduces a bytestream to being essentially white noise by taking out repetitive s…

I think the real difficulty for prediction of the stock market is that your theory will be understood by others who will alter their behaviour in response to their theory, in essence invalidating it. Its actually a problem across the social sciences, witness the inflitration and acceptance of Freud and Jung's ideas which are no so much part of the culture that theories cannot be built on them (they were always a little suspect anyway though).

Re: School for quants - Inside UCL's Financial Computing Centre

#30

Post by dustineichler »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #21
dustineichler wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should've said "unschool". Mia culpa. There's no way I'd go back for another degree at this point. I just might be interested in finance related programming.

Wilmott's Certificate in Quantitative Finance is the way to go in your case: http://wilmott.com/cqf.cfm http://www.portfolio.com/executives/features/2008/08/13/Paul...

Am I reading this right... Wilmott's program is roughly $20K. Ouch, but I guess the salary expectation would also be considerably different too. Thanks.
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