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Palin's to-be son-in-law HS dropout


Gary_Yngve

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I'll preface this with a disclaimer about my economic ignorance, but I read a long article on nytimes.com a few weeks ago about how the managers would push the guys doing the modeling until the models returned the answers they desired. Garbage in, garbage out.

 

 

Works for the anthro global warming grant grabbers too. :shock:

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I'll preface this with a disclaimer about my economic ignorance, but I read a long article on nytimes.com a few weeks ago about how the managers would push the guys doing the modeling until the models returned the answers they desired. Garbage in, garbage out.

 

 

Works for the anthro global warming grant grabbers too. :shock:

 

Link please?

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Pi to six digits is utterly irrelevant in this day.

 

One would use pi in three contexts now:

1) back of the envelope calculations, where 3, 22/7, etc., may be good enough.

2) algebraically as a symbol, e.g. e^(pi i) = -1

3) in numerical code, where the constant is already defined in the computer, and you just say Math.PI or whatever

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I see lacking a high school diploma as being a huge disadvantage for someone, even in a skilled trade.

 

I don't know how common it is, but in my local union (it's a skilled trade), we would not normally consider a person lacking an HS diploma.

elitist

 

and in a union.

 

elitist commie!

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complex financial instruments were actually designed by mathematicians and physicists...

"Obviously they turned out to be wrong," Partnoy says. Asked why, he says, "Because you can't model human behavior with math."

Nice try bitches, but the only "mathematicians and physicists" who end up in finance are the failures and charlatans. Real "mathematicians and physicists" would be the first to tell you that market psychology has absolutely nothing to do with the quantitative sciences that they study.

 

But who is stupider: the pretenders claiming that simply crunching numbers is scientific, or the greedy businessmen and investors that bet billions on it? Where is the business sense that these people were supposed to have learned in business school?

 

ps. good electricians make good money

 

You realize there are papers on these exact instruments you could read and not look like such a fucking retard all the time? Of course that'd mean you'd look like the Charlatan and not the Wharton grad :argue:

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complex financial instruments were actually designed by mathematicians and physicists...

"Obviously they turned out to be wrong," Partnoy says. Asked why, he says, "Because you can't model human behavior with math."

Nice try bitches, but the only "mathematicians and physicists" who end up in finance are the failures and charlatans. Real "mathematicians and physicists" would be the first to tell you that market psychology has absolutely nothing to do with the quantitative sciences that they study.

 

But who is stupider: the pretenders claiming that simply crunching numbers is scientific, or the greedy businessmen and investors that bet billions on it? Where is the business sense that these people were supposed to have learned in business school?

 

ps. good electricians make good money

 

You realize there are papers on these exact instruments you could read and not look like such a fucking retard all the time? Of course that'd mean you'd look like the Charlatan and not the Wharton grad :argue:

1) Charlatan should only be capitalized at the beginning of a sentence.

2) Wharton is a business school, not a school of physics or mathematics. So how are you refuting my original point exactly?

3) You need to get a life if you read enough of my posts to know what I "look" (did you mean sound?) like all of the time.

4) You don't really have anything to say, but you'll post anyway because being an asshole makes you feel good. It's okay, we understand. :poke:

Edited by ashw_justin
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ps. here's my own reading recommendation: a book whose message was considered scandalously novel on Wall Street... while at the same time boringly obvious to even the novice quantitative scientist.

 

The easiest way to success on Wall Street is to take intellectual credit for good luck and/or coincidental covariance.

 

Just because one's bullshit routine includes crunching numbers, regression analysis, or "backtesting," doesn't make one a mathematician or a scientist. Not even if one manages to get the bullshit published.

 

Now learning from our mistakes and adequately appreciating uncertainty and risk: that would be on the way to being scientific.

 

fooled-by-randomness-798639.jpg

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The Scientific Method

Theory: people are too greedy to realize when an investment is too risky, or "too good to be true."

Hypothesis: if I confuse these rich greedy guys enough, they will have no choice but to believe me and give me all of their money.

Experiment: Use impressive scientific degree to legitimize pretty models promising astronomical returns forever, collect money from greedy rich people.

Result: Disappear with suitcases full of money to secret retirement getaway while the rest of civilization suffocates on its own greed and stupidity.

Theory: intact.

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The Scientific Method

Theory: people are too greedy to realize when an investment is too risky, or "too good to be true."

Hypothesis: if I confuse these rich greedy guys enough, they will have no choice but to believe me and give me all of their money.

Experiment: Use impressive scientific degree to legitimize pretty models promising astronomical returns forever, collect money from greedy rich people.

Result: Disappear with suitcases full of money to secret retirement getaway while the rest of civilization suffocates on its own greed and stupidity.

Theory: intact.

 

See also, Ponzi Scheme

 

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The Scientific Method

Theory: people are too greedy to realize when an investment is too risky, or "too good to be true."

Hypothesis: if I confuse these rich greedy guys enough, they will have no choice but to believe me and give me all of their money.

Experiment: Use impressive scientific degree to legitimize pretty models promising astronomical returns forever, collect money from greedy rich people.

Result: Disappear with suitcases full of money to secret retirement getaway while the rest of civilization suffocates on its own greed and stupidity.

Theory: intact.

Hey asshole, how do you classify the millions who are ready to retire, have worked their whole lives without some *training* in financial matters? People who are so busy working at a deadend job, scrimping and saving and doing without so that they will have something later instead of banking on the joke that is Social Security?

 

I don't get how you can say that people who invested in Wall Street are greedy and stupid...maybe not in the know, but these fucking assholes didn't exactly broadcast what they were doing...

 

you are a dick...

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... the millions who are ready to retire, have worked their whole lives without some *training* in financial matters? People who are so busy working at a deadend job, scrimping and saving and doing without so that they will have something later...

 

Do these people exist?

 

In America?

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ps. here's my own reading recommendation: a book whose message was considered scandalously novel on Wall Street... while at the same time boringly obvious to even the novice quantitative scientist.

 

The easiest way to success on Wall Street is to take intellectual credit for good luck and/or coincidental covariance.

 

Just because one's bullshit routine includes crunching numbers, regression analysis, or "backtesting," doesn't make one a mathematician or a scientist. Not even if one manages to get the bullshit published.

 

Now learning from our mistakes and adequately appreciating uncertainty and risk: that would be on the way to being scientific.

 

 

Erm, darling Justin, I read that book a couple of years ago and no, Texas Hedges are not scandalous 8D

 

The problem wasn't the products per se, it was the data underlying the products. shoddy ratings, inaccurate data used to model defaults, etc.

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Hey asshole, how do you classify the millions who are ready to retire, have worked their whole lives without some *training* in financial matters? People who are so busy working at a deadend job, scrimping and saving and doing without so that they will have something later instead of banking on the joke that is Social Security?

 

I don't get how you can say that people who invested in Wall Street are greedy and stupid...maybe not in the know, but these fucking assholes didn't exactly broadcast what they were doing...

 

you are a dick...

I'm not praising the conmen who nucleated this crisis. I'm simply pointing out that we should have been smart/wise enough to tell them to go f' themselves in the first place. So I think your hostility is mostly misplaced, but I understand if you need a punching bag.

 

I'm not saying that there aren't tragic victims, or that they deserve to lose everything. The punishment should fit the crime. Certainly the insiders who knowingly perpetrated this rape and pillage of public finance deserve to lose everything and be exiled from the business world, or worse.

 

However, the lay investor (in which class I count myself, by the way) is not innocent in this matter--we went right along with it, and our willing, overly faithful participation in the illusory system of "unrealized wealth" was a necessary ingredient for the current crisis.

 

Let me be crystal clear about my view here: nobody who couldn't risk the current stock market crash should have invested in stocks. Nobody should have taken out a mortgage that they couldn't pay off, even if housing prices deflated. No business should have been paying for everything with easy credit (debt) that wasn't likely to last. All of these things are painful, but true.

 

Show me an investor who truly lost everything (which by the way probably rules out most of the relatively innocent people whom you are defending), and I'll show you a stupid investor. Nobody should have pretended that this couldn't possibly happen [again].

 

Fortunately, most people people have something left, and will get by, despite this hardship. This is because they were conservative enough to limit their exposure to risk, and wise enough not to live beyond their means. Furthermore, as a civil society we are going to do what we can to soften the landings.

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