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Teachers in many states are being laid off and there is an assault on their pay and perks, so one might want to downwardly estimate their projected earnings taking into account the increased insecurity and possibly lower wages. I've always felt there's an argument to be made for trade school --...

That's why it was turned on its head by traders, who used actual option prices to estimate the unobservable "volatility." More discussion about this in MacKenzie's book, An Engine, Not a Camera.

What's right about it? I'm serious.

This is a joke, right?

Assuming there are many more people applying to first-tier programs, does that mean unsuccessful applicants will settle for second-tier programs? Or will many of them realise it's first-tier or nothing, since second-tier means no job? This is a real question, not a rhetorical one. It seems...

Seems to be the case that self-righteous and ignorant lefties, wanting to put a human face to, and find scapegoats for, what went awry are gunning for the big boys. To them it's a morality tale, good versus evil, and black-and-white in its simplicity. Supposedly the boundless avarice of those at...

Quite so. I suppose the question is: Did the big boys knowingly commit or encourage fraud? Which is very different from saying the system encourages fraud. I have no firm opinions on the matter. Though I have to add that I think trust in the financial industry is at a low ebb.

Hmmm, yes, quite. Nonetheless justice is being seen not to be done. And I think there's a plausible point that trust is a lubricant in economic life. Of course I operate without it but not everyone is a wolf. There are a lot of fleeced sheep who are feeling very betrayed.

Interesting essay on trust at Global Research:

Imperial, King's, LSE and City Uni all offer programs.

Imperial has the "brand name" and the advantage of being in London. Personally I'm not sure how strong the Imperial program is. Warwick is possibly/probably the stronger math department (don't know about now but the pecking order used to be Cambridge - Warwick - Oxford).

Which university and which books? It's true that British standards have been declining for decades and converging to American levels. Partly perhaps because 'A' levels have become easier, less rigorous. Partly -- and in related vein -- because hordes of youngsters now go to university, unlike...

They are bleak in the United States.

I've seen one of his books. He writes clearly. I don't remember how much math he uses -- I'm fairly (but not completely) sure there's no stochastic calculus in his oeuvre. If you can, glance at a copy of McDonald's Derivatives Markets. If the first few chapters are within your ken, that book...

It's a toss-up between Cambridge and Imperial. For physics in general, Cambridge is at the top of the heap, followed by Imperial. What I like about the Imperial project is the testing of models and your latitude in choosing a language. If you don't like Cambridge, I wonder how well you will...

In the Guardian:

Cambridge is a nice place to live. Oxford to a (slightly?) lesser extent. And London sucks. Knock UCL off your list at once. Imperial, of course, is also in London but you will have to decide. I would choose Cambridge -- nice place to live and the company of some of the smartest people on the...

Though I wonder if the employers can write any better. I suspect there's a rose-tinted nostalgia for a mythical past, where business school graduates were articulate and had dexterity with language. I wonder if it's really any worse now than in the past (yes, I've seen the declining scores Andy...

This is some trenchant writing from Michael Klare, whose two books ("Blood and Oil," and "Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet") I also recommend.

This is a riveting essay in Monthly Review. I blush with shame that this is not a "credible source" but notwithstanding, it is still a worthwhile read. Some excerpts:

The problem in Saudi is the same as in the rest of the region: a growing number of unemployed young, a function of a rapidly growing population. The fat and corrupt Saudi rulers know this, hence the recent measures to bribe the population. The key difference is the unemployed Saudi young are not...

There's a modus vivendi between these large body shops and D.C. or perhaps between the corporate clients and D.C. And there's a reason they're called body shops: eight or nine Indians are crammed into tiny apartments -- perhaps they're not paid enough, or they're trying to save what they do make.

An article in the Guardian which gives a sign of the times:

In the Independent:

I agree that Python is a good first language to pick up OOP concepts from. And I agree that C is a good place to start before tackling C++.

I personally don't like it or recommend it, which just underscores my point that what works for one person might not work for another.

You keep asking for recommendations on different areas. First of all, if you really are following up on all these areas -- that is to say, these posts of yours aren't frivolous -- you are doing way too much. Secondly, learn to find out for yourself. Go to university bookstores, browse, and find...

Overall Manchester is better than Lancaster. By the way, what is Birkbeck's job placement service like? Birkbeck's big plus is it's based in London.

From UCL.

The gist of the matter is that with further cutbacks -- quite draconian ones -- in government support to universities, they are even more dependent on foreign students to stay afloat. But to attract these students they need to provide some incentives for post-study work. I am of course talking...

The telltale signs tend to come out more in an interview than the resume. Of course it seldom happens that there's perfect congruence between what the job needs and what an applicant can bring to bear but a little bit of tactful questioning usually reveals the overall strength of a coder. Even...

I've heard people talking about it for the last twenty years but this is all I've been able to glean. Dominic probably knows some people involved in this (like Riaz) so he may be able to shed some light on it. Islam as the ideology of primitive accumulation, of mercantile capitalism, with a...

No, they use euphemisms like "profit-sharing." The idea (as I undertand it) is that the investor also takes some of the risks, so perhaps it's not an euphemism for interest. Unlike a loan in the Western systems, where there is only "usury" (i.e., interest). There's no "risk-free interest rate"...

This was common practice among many British "colleges" (owned and operated largely by Pakistanis) until about last year when the government cracked down on them. For this one you've listed here there must be another five still operating surreptitiously.

You are right. First of all, even a truly experienced person is expected to take a little time familiarising himself with the ropes. Secondly, the Indian consulting agency has one or more people who are available for advice around the clock. So if an Indian is placed in a company and doesn't...

Not saying you are; merely that US employers have a better idea of what Indian resumes mean (but usually for their own reasons turn a blind eye towards). Good posts, incidentally.

I believe everything you've written except the part I've underlined. Maybe it was true fifteen years ago but today Americans and American companies know that Indians are fabricating their resumes. If the interview really is searching then the fibs will be exposed (despite the interview preparation).

It goes deeper than the "revolving door," unfortunately. That's just a symptom of a deeper malaise: financial interests constitute the state. The state is not some neutral player that's been subverted by some greedy officials hoping to cash in by taking on lucrative positions in the very sectors...

Interesting blog post about three weeks back by (Professor) Steve Hsu here: And though unrelated to the discussion, this is an interesting point made by a commenter (Steve Sailer):

From a "credible source" (I hope): Meanwhile, from Paul Craig Roberts, ex- assistant secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration and ex- associate editor of the WSJ (who now shows what a commie, liberal, radical, and extremist he really he is, and hence utterly lacking in credibility):

If memory serves, Heseltine was made fun of in Tory circles because he bought his own furniture (instead of inheriting it). Essex man and Essex girl have been the butt of jokes for decades -- I've seen books devoted to such jokes. Incidentally, I bought my second house in Tilbury -- where some...

The thing is a scam to raise money for the Tories. The parents doing the buying probably already know the owners/directors of these companies. The companies won't end up worse off: they're doing a favor for the Tory party and in a place like England, where mutual back-scratching is ubiquitous...

This is interesting:

The writer is a bit unfair as it's not a uniquely American state of affairs. The same situation holds in Britain, France, and Japan. And historically, universities everywhere have tended not to produce the kind of critical thinkers the writer refers to. Why should they? They're part of the...

Thought-provoking essay by William Deresiewicz:

Concur entirely. These bum programs need to be exposed to the light of day. Too many of them -- all started within the last few years on shoestring budgets, with "adjunct faculty" (i.e., people hired off the street), little or no placement assistance, and conning Asian students.

At root -- and what the average German knows intuitively -- Nordic and Mediterranean societies differ. I won't comment on Ireland as it seems to be sui generis, but Club Med societies -- and by implication, governments -- differ from the Nordic model of hard-working, frugal, and educated...

This could be discussed at length, which I'm reluctant to do. The first question is philosophical: what is a real solution for countries like Greece and Ireland? There may not be one and there may only be Hobson's choice of taking what seems to be the least worst alternative. Greece is not...

Dominic, they can work in the UK and this has been so since 2004. Legally, not off the books. Technically they have to register with the Worker Registration Scheme (though many don't bother), which is straightforward and no bother at all. This ability to work in the UK is something Phony Tony...

Since 2004 they've been able to move to the UK, Ireland, and Cyprus. Indeed, on the streets of London you will see any number of East Europeans -- mostly Poles, though. From May of this year, Germany will open up as well, and probably the other Western EU states. Race prejudice may have...

Same is happening in Latvia. Last year a survey in Britain revealed (if memory serves) that three-quarters of the people would prefer to move elsewhere. So it's not confined to the Emerald Isle. But it does have a history of emigration, where for decades its young have sought greener pastures...

I'm just being realistic: no need to be cynical. Of the 500m FB users, only a subset are of interest to the authorities. The rest post pictures of their new puppies or where they went on their holidays. And this subset of troublemakers -- dissidents, contrarians, etc., -- are tightly networked...

Facebook users have to be realistic and realise intel agencies and corporations have unfettered access to FB. Waxing indignant about changes in privacy policies at FB is a waste of time.

A perspective in NLR:

Yep. I think before WW1 the British army reduced the height requirement for conscripts from 5'4" to 5'1". Conditions in 19th century Britain is what prompted H.G. Wells' account of the Morlocks in The Time Machine. Six- and seven-year old children would become chimney sweeps; children a little...

The courses on financial accounting, cost/management accounting, and managerial policy/ organisational strategy (taught in the context of case studies) are all useful but they still leave an intellectually threadbare program that is filled with filler courses (marketing, ethics, management...

Article in the Telegraph:

With probability 1 a.s. (almost surely). :)

The U of Minnesota's MFM program is a complete joke. People on this forum who have criticised the Fordham program in past years would wet themselves silly if they saw the U of Minnesota's MFM program. There may be weaker or equally weak programs elsewhere but I don't know of any.

Reminds me of Henry Mintzberg's pertinent book, Managers, not MBAs. My opinion of The Economist has just gone up.

If memory serves, a one degree (celsius) rise in global temperature means a ten per cent decline in food production. We are seeing global temperature going up and also, as a concomitant, weather becoming more volatile. The kind of phenomena (floods, for example) that occurred once every twenty...

The first thing I ask myself after looking at the site is: Is there anything at all beyond the site? Or is it just a website to ensnare the unwary and obtuse? This one looks to be another for-profit racket, and was bought up last year by a US for-profit educational company (source). Here is a...

If a third of the population was dependent on the potato, wouldn't a crop failure precipitate famine? And if it didn't, why the mass exodus at the time?

In the Telegraph:

Experience indicates that when manufacture shifts elsewhere, design also moves sooner or later. The cents are made in manufacture while the dollars are made in design, marketing, and distribution. So countries engaged in manufacture have a strong incentive to move up the chain. The company...

Ireland isn't unique in that its young are leaving: exactly the same phenomenon is occuring in Latvia as well. It's difficult for me to understand the financial system as a whole: it seems to be all smoke and mirrors. The losses on real estate worth are paper losses, fictitious wealth. Yet it...

Broadening the discussion a wee bit, in the Anglo-American sphere and in other major chunks of the world (the Middle East, for example, which is in the Anglo-American sphere of influence), it's an era of unparalleled economic and political stagnation. It's been deepening over decades.

This was what was being said twenty years ago (plus the claim that the West would do all the highly-skilled top-dollar jobs while letting India and China do the grunt work). With the benefit of hindsight we can see how hollow these claims were. Like Japan sixty years ago and Germany even...

Interesting piece at Commondreams:

Rrright ... do these monkeys actually get paid salaries for producing such "analysis?"

There is no such fear. And the US government and (Egyptian) Muslim Brotherhood are happy to work together, official rhetoric notwithstanding. "Radical Islam" is largely a US bogeyman created to justify military budgets when the Soviet bogeyman inconveniently disappeared. The problem at the...

Are markets concerned? The US is working hard behind the scenes to ensure that middle-class "reformers" like El Baradei take over (assuming Mubarak's hold on the country becomes untenable). New faces, some cosmetic changes as a sop to the general public, but mostly the same policies. Same thing...

You speak sooth. It's the dullest European city I've ever been to. Well, not quite. Oslo is even worse, Stockholm must be as bad. And I've never heard anything exciting about Zurich. The world of money is boring: a world of lifeless abstractions, of dessicated shadows, and it's difficult to...

A waste of time, even if it's free. For MBA epsilon-minus semi-morons. No. It's a fun course but nothing to do with fin eng. You learn things that deepen your understanding of calculus (e.g., why the series expansion of 1/(1 + x^2) breaks down at x =1 -- turns out there's a singularity at x =...

This has been circulating on the Net. I don't know where it originates from:

In the Telegraph:

Not to worry. The US is working behind the scenes with many of the rebels. Some of them have been over in past years and met Condoleeza and Hillary, attended sessions at Freedom House, and so on. Everything is cool. Maybe new faces there, but more or less the same policies. That's the idea anyway.

Readers' comments below the graph are eminently worth reading. One is struck by how articulate they are, their easy command of language, and the facility with which they marshall facts and arguments to make their case.

1) Bernanke's idea of "stimulating" the economy doesn't look like it's going to work (if you read the WSJ pieces Whitney cites). 2) The lower dollar is going to lead to lower living standards in the US -- assuming the rest of the world stands still for this "beggar thy neighbor" trade policy...

A piece by Mike Whitney today: There are some quotes from recent WSJ articles as well, which indicate the economic strategy of American policymakers. Not very encouraging.

Some coverage here of the report:

Reminds me of George Bernard Shaw who said you learn something by going in and making a damn fool of yourself. And Peter Townsend (in Up the Organisation), who said that if you slap a toddler every time he falls down, he'll never learn to walk.

Let's put it this way: I like Wilmott's Intro to Quant Finance, and I like George Levy's little-known Computational Finance using C and C#. Both cover stochastic ideas -- the first in a heuristic manner, and the second in accelerated form (roughly 30 pages). I also like Lyuu's Financial...

It's a fine book. But if you feel like a big boy, try C++ Primer. More sophisticated.

I wonder how many quants really have an in-depth knowledge of stochastic, and whether it's really critical to quant success. Programming skill and experience, on the other hand, is indispensable.

I have about half a dozen titles in front of me. Someone on this forum has already recommended: 1) Think Python, by Allen Downey Other books at roughly the same level are: 2) Practical Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science using Python, by Campbell, Gries, Montojo and Wilson...

Then my two cents is start with a language like Ruby or Python. Either (or both) of these languages will give you a foundation in control structures, classes, methods, and so on in a fast and uncluttered way. I can give you the names of some books if you wish (either on this thread or in a...

Lawrence Solomon's point of view:

What is your programming background?

It's a good book. I also recommend it. It teaches C# with mathematical algorithms in view.

Read the FT article I referenced here for a point of view similar to yours: http://www.quantnet.com/forum/showpost.php?p=64614&postcount=15 The Chinese are already facing a bit of a dilemma in Sudan. Just as the US navy is patrolling vital oil-carrying sealanes and the US army is guarding...

Trying to get back to the subject of the thread, an interesting article by Geoff Dyer in the FT on how China, regardless of its intention, may get involved in the affairs of other countries and perhaps assume a more interventionist role. Some meaty stuff here. [/COLOR][/LEFT]

Yep, Niall Ferguson and you are right, sir.

Trying to get back to the subject of the thread, here is an amusing RT report on the Bank of China's presence in NYC. Anyone watching this YouTube video should do so with the caveat that RT is provocative on matters American and they have their share of schadenfreude. Postscript: This is a...

Apologies to all and sundry (and a plea for indulgence from Andy) but this piece at Counterpunch is too good to miss:

The US, like Orwell's Oceania, is a state engaged in permanent war. We're all familiar with Eisenhower's speech in 1961 warning of the burgeoning military-industrial complex. Here is that old war horse, Douglas MacArthur, speaking about ten years earlier: It's not just "socialists" who talk...

All I see you doing is making naked assertions not backed by any real argument, and dismissing out of hand anything that doesn't agree with your point of view. You couple this with random ad hominems like Buchanan being out of his mind. This is realpolitik we're talking about, which both...

Ferguson, a conservative English historian, coined the term ‘Chamerica' and said that it was a marriage of convenience. It is like a marriage between a hardworking man (China) and a lazy but prestigious woman (America) who spends the hardworking man's money. Ferguson thinks that this marriage...

Dominic, the US wants permanent bases being set up there, as in Iraq. If a puppet government can guarantee those bases, the US will "walk away." If the puppet regime fails, it will need to be "liberated" and "democratised" again (because of, er, the way they treat their women). Same thing in...

What world are you living in? Even neocons in the Bush era were happy to use the word "empire." As for bases, when the Japanese wanted to "renegotiate" the base in Okinawa a year or two back, the US government twisted their arm. And the Japanese "subsidise" the base. As for forcing others to...

You're missing the point (yet again). Where I got the article from is immaterial: look at the arguments and facts it presents. Here's Pat Buchanan writing (whom I also follow avidly), an excerpt of which follows: You've really got to stop watching Fox News.

A piece at wsws.org: A rather disquieting read, I confess.

Though one should add that you can hang yourself in C# as well by using unsafe code. Generally, though, you are right: the managed code of Java and C# means you skate free.

This looks like an interesting review of a new book, titled Academically Adrift, that's being released by the U of Chicago Press: And this, um, seems a bit controversial:

I'll flatter Brooks and say he wrote the essay tongue-in-cheek. But with this part I agree:

Well, the debt is dollar-denominated -- which the US government can print at will. So the risk of default is nil. Typically defaults occur when countries can't service debt in a currency other than their own (like Argentina in 2000). But while the risk of default is nil, there are questions...

The NYT is quoted as saying she's been getting death threats. Whatever for? For me the epitome of single-minded parental nurture is the Polgar family -- three girls who were intensively taught chess by their father. Yet even the best of the three -- Judit -- could not and cannot climb to the...

The USD could lose its role and not be replaced by any currency. There are precedents for this: in the interwar years 1919-1939, sterling was no longer the global reserve but the dollar did not supplant it (though the US was clearly the world's largest economy). There were spheres of influence...

In the Daily Mail:

I glanced at Vivek Wadhwa's article in Business Week, and again there are points to agree with: And the point that like is not being compared to like: <!--/STORY-->

Some good stuff there: And this strikes a chord: As does this: Not to mention this:

Off-topic but I read Amy Chua's book, "World on Fire" a few years ago. It's difficult to agree with some of the things she says. Your child may not excel when he or she is in a group composed of other capable -- even talented - children. All the pressure and rote practice in the world is not...

As Andy indicates, the vast majority of them are from recruiters, the bulk of whom -- as in IT -- seem to have room temperature IQs. Which is part of the reason they list a blanket set of requirements. They collect resumes and pass them on, hoping to collect a fee -- and add just about no value...

Triana talks about bad and dangerous models but if one has a financial and economic system that is fundamentally irrational at root, and one whose ground rules keep changing, how is one ever going to have "good" models? Model-building in finance and economics seems to be about providing an...

Generics is the way to go. Rather than an overloaded method.

(source)

*Sputtering up my coffee* -- I don't believe those figures, if the blogs are anything to go by. The T-13 (Harvard, Yale, all the way down to Michigan) have a crack at the good jobs. There are some who get the plush jobs; most don't. Knew one computer network technician with a law degree from the...

*Shrug* -- the problem is all those history, literature, and fine arts graduates out there who want a crack at the good life. They want to believe, they need to believe, that they can have the life. The law schools deceive, true, but they have a credulous population of arts students who think...

Think it's published (or used to be) in The Independent. Pin-striped bloke. Problem with all these Hollywood films is they pander to their audience by grossly oversimplifying or misrepresenting what happens -- instead of educating it. They sensationalise. They bring in incongruous things like...

The book is written tongue-in-cheek (as is to be expected). Too much swearing merely reveals a paucity of vocabulary, if not intelligence. And if one does have to resort to it, doing it with a foreign accent is likely to look incongruous and be hilarious in impact. If memory serves, there was...

The NYT mentions some blogs from disillusioned law school graduates but fails to mention this one (which I've mentioned before), no doubt out of a sense of propriety and decorum. Postscript: The blog is mentioned on page 2 of the article. It's interesting to speculate on why there aren't...

Only a thin sliver of differential equation theory is used in finance (and that too, maybe fortuitously) -- a bit about parabolic PDEs, a bit about boundary-value conditions for such equations, and a bit about numerical methods for solving them.

I didn't read the question properly. I shall now commit seppuku.

For #2, two of the dice would have to show 1, and the third could be 2,3 or 5. If the first was 1, the second was 1, and the third 2,3, or 5, then you would have 1/6*1/6*3/6 = 3/216. Multriply by 3 (because first could be 1 and third could be 1, or second and third could be 1) to get 9/216...

I advise people to go to state schools (unless they're getting a full or almost full scholarship from a good private school). Yet in real terms, even state schools are now as expensive as -- if not a bit more so -- than private ones were back in 1980.

A physicist friend of mine just told me this:

A piece by Stephen Lendman; it makes for grim reading.

From the same source: For the two who were offered $350,000, there was probably more involved than their Wharton degree. Either they had years of prior relevant experience or they were known to the company who hired them (sons or nephews of the owners?). Why pay so much over the odds when the...

A 2-semester or 3-semester calculus sequence in the US may involve some exposure to rudimentary aspects of ODEs but doesn't cover most of the material above. Did you cover all the material above in your calculus course? This material is foundational to studying differential equations further...

There's a definite correlation (in the sense that the higher you go up the IQ scale the greater the incidence of myopia), but the genetic mechanism -- if there is one -- isn't understood. It seems that exposure to daylight while young reduces the incidence and severity of myopia so it could be...

This might be pertinent:

It says "Essay B." Give an underlined section heading to each of the four areas, and then describe your preparation and coverage of each area. If possible, present your own understanding of each area -- e.g., how you conceive of linear algebra, how you think about object-oriented (or functional)...

According to this source, 70% of trade positions are held for an average of 11 seconds.

Average stock is held for 22 seconds (up from 20) and average foreign currency investment 30 seconds (up from 28). Encouraging signs that investors are now beginning to think long-term. The source for these numbers is an interview with Michael Hudson (the numbers come out towards the end of the...

I recommend Langtangen's A Primer on Scientific Programming with Python (Springer, 2009). It has two or three financial applications as exercises but the true value of the book is its coverage of topics like difference equations, differential equations, integration, and Monte Carlo methods. It's...

Many highly-qualified workers who are laid off free-lance, become "consultants"; the problem is they may not get much (or any) work -- certainly not enough to replace their previous paycheck. Also, the failure rate for small business has always been high -- in this economic climate, and with...

Apologies to all and sundry but the "new normal" (referred to by Dominic) interests me greatly; it's clear that the social fabric of the USA is changing radically and probably irrevocably. An interesting essay which I found today:

I doubt anyone on this forum has ever come on a J-1 but in case anyone abroad is thinking of it, this account seems pertinent:

The days of full employment are over for good. Partly due to offshoring and automation. And partly (in the US) because of ongoing imperial decline, which means, inter alia, that it's losing markets and spheres of influence to rivals, and spending more on military adventures than on the rearguard...

Interesting arguments by Daniel Amerman (whom I never heard of previously):

These things are inherently interesting to anyone who's worked in manufacturing (like me). But I don't think they have any application in finance.

The decline goes back much further -- at least a century. English culture has been against industry and engineering and oriented towards services like accounting, law, and brokering. A gentleman didn't get his hands dirty. Those who made money as manufacturers made sure their sons didn't follow...

I agree. I think it's question of when, rather than if. Remember, though, that the continental Europeans are possibly not that eager to have a global financial hub -- because of the distortions it creates in the domestic economy. Look at Britain as a prime example -- decrepit industrial...

London plays second fiddle to NYC. London became a global financial services hub when Britain was top dog. Today, with a relatively weak (British) economy, London could lose its role as a global financial hub with time. I personally wouldn't like to live in London. I would prefer any...

Take a look at Cavalli-Sforza's The History and Geography of Human Genes. And perhaps Genes, Culture, and Human Evolution by Stone, et al to understand the severe limitations of the concept of race. Race is ill-defined to begin with. How to classify Armenian and Georgians? Are they "white?"...

It's important to not compare oranges to apples. I don't know how difficult it is to get 60% on AP calculus. It's probably more difficult than getting an "A" in high school calculus (or even college calculus), where a percentage is assigned to homework, a percentage to class attendance and...

As Sailer argues here, there's a case to be made for educational tracking of the kind they have in Japan and Germany. In egalitarian USA, where everyone is supposed to be equal, the bright ones get short shrift as the emphasis is on getting various pass rates up by 1) lowering the bar by dumbing...

Steve Sailer's analysis of US PISA results by ethnic group makes for fascinating reading. Those who take delight in bashing American education might want to glance at it as it presents a different way of looking at American results. The educational system may not necessarily be at fault.

"Superior" and "inferior" indicate value judgements. Let us say "different." There is correlation bertween IQ performance and academic achievement. More generally, for example, the US Army some years ago instituted a cut-off point of IQ 80: it found it was taking too long to train people below...

The notorious book by Herrnstein and Murray, titled "The Bell Curve," gives sources: These figures vary a bit, depending on when and where populations are tested but they don't vary significantly. Correcting for socio-economic factors is something I cannot do, though doubtless it exists...

The Minnesota Transracial Adoption Study suggests otherwise. If you talk to teachers in the front-line trenches of "diverse" schools (which I've been myself for a while), when they're candid they admit there are differences. But because of the suffocating blanket of pious and sanctimonious...

For African-Americans it is 84 (the test is standardised so that white Americans score 100). Mexicans and Mexican-Americans are scoring 89. North-East Asians 105 and the small group of Ashkenazi Jews 114. Probably that's the reason why Jews, who constitute 2% of the US population, account for...

Steve Shreve’s makes two exellent points regarding the difficulties faced by quants. What's the solution to this? How to get around these issues ? How to ensure safety of quants, especially at the lower levels who would be more keen to voice dissatisfaction on his models being misused ? The...

Application packets for US universities are so much redundant horsesh!t. If nothing else, the country will drown in red tape. Redundant verbiage, both spoken and written, all around one. No wonder a third of the world's lawyers are in the US alone. A reminder to myself to reread Heller's Catch-22.

I'm not sure it's the system; I think rather it's outsiders and their families exploiting every possibility the system affords -- AP classes, college courses while in school, IB programs, and so on. If anything, I'd say the system is inflexible and bureucratic, and designed for mediocrity. The...

Don't you get a choice of Advanced Placement classes? Or the option of some college classes at a nearby community college or university?

Pat Buchanan, not Pat Robertson. Buchanan and just about every other racialist do make evolutionary arguments for differences in intelligence among ethnic groups. Just like you are doing for the Chinese. But this isn't palatable in PC USA. Chicken and egg argument: what came first? Already...

From the ever-controversial Pat Buchanan:

People like Peter Schiff (among others) were explaining what was going to happen to the housing market a year or two before the subprime debacle. Each time he came on the air his prognoses were airily dismissed. At the present time the US economy is in seriously bad shape, with all sorts of...

Maybe it wasn't taught properly. The easiest way is to start with the rationals, which form a field. Then add the square root of -1 to this field. You now have the field of Gaussian numbers, which contains Gaussian integers. Now you can prove Fermat's last theorem that p congruent to 1(mod 4)...

Leeds and York are second-tier but I'm not sure about Warwick. It used to have arguably the second strongest math department in the country (after Cambridge and ahead of Oxford). Don't know about now but looking at their web site, it still looks strong.

Absorbing review of the Facebook phenomenon in the NY Review of Books; some choice excerpts:

I'd suggest reading books like Derman's My Life as a Quant and MacKenzie's An Engine, Not a Camera to understand how finance became mathematised, how physicists and mathematicians started applying tools and methods learnt in the exact sciences to finance. Another book I'd recommend for an even...

I think Dominic mentions somewhere on this forum that his outfit (P&D) maintans a database of 1,000 PhDs (presumably looking for quant employment). Math and physics PhDs started drifting years ago towards finance mostly because of scant academic opportunities. These people are presumably...

Someone else also looks askance at Zuckenberg:

On the contrary, if you go back to the original post and link, it's about PhDs in general. In general there is a glut, as the Economist article makes clear. It's you who are talking specifically about finance/business PhDs, for whom at the present time there appear to be job openings. Read...

Never was a truer word said.

No, there are not. I'm talking of math and physics.The absolute cream of the Harvard-Princeton-Berkeley crowd find jobs at similar institutions. The others drift downwards to second- and third-tier universities. And this is inevitable given the overproduction of PhDs. Even teaching colleges and...

The odds are aginst it. That's why it's referred to as a giant Ponzi or pyramid scheme. As Steve Sailer describes it: If you're a super-duper intellectual gymnast, go for the PhD. Otherwise you're just grist to the mill, fodder for a self-serving academic system that is churning out way too...

How about something like a food stand/cart? Though it'll cost way over $100. Here is a review of the 20 best in NYC.

Don't know if this helps:

As I see it, American employers want two things: 1) They don't want to spend a cent on training. They'd rather poach. 2) They want ever-cheaper and more docile labor. If you look at the history of US immigration over the last century and a half, this seems to have been a propelling factor. I...

Pat Buchanan on the issue:

A differing point of view: By the way, has anyone here taken the Voight-Kampff test? </ p>

Not much I don't already know but some nice things to copy and paste: The dubious advantages of a PhD are pimped by an educrat mafia.

It's not unique to the UK; it happens in the US as well in areas like journalism, fashion, and publishing, where liberal arts graduates are trying to get their foot in the door into intensely competitive areas. The last year or two the parents of some of these graduates have even been paying for...

They're aiming for tech-based start-ups (rather than manufacturing set-ups); maybe they'll have some limited success, though I hardly think it'll lead to many job openings. Manufacturing has been going down in NYC since, well, 1945. First the jobs drifted to the the south -- Carolinas, the...

So they are being paid? In London, even the police have been attempting to recruit unpaid volunteer policemen (I've seen it first-hand with a police booth manned by police officers handing out brochures outside the Tesco in Ealing Broadway).

A friend of mine posted this:

Russian raw materials (including oil and gas) and weapons to China; Chinese finished products to Russia. Trade isn't large. In the broader geopolitical context, Bobo Lo wrote a useful book a couple of years back, titled Axis of Convenience. A review can be found here. An excerpt:

Use them, but interspersed with illustrative material. When you say "team-player" add something (banal and not too long) to back up your contention. Stay away from complex words and complex sentence structures: they're a bane for resumes. If you wish, sparingly add a word here, a phrase there...

I don't see "pro-active" on the list. The problem as I see it is that if you don't use cliches in writing and in talk, you get into trouble. You're expected to use cliches. HR people, headhunters, and software are looking for those buzzwords, and even if they aren't exactly specified, they...

This is all suspect and unconvincing. Which no doubt accounts for why they're starting it on a small scale.

It's been on the cards since the Yekaterinburg pow-wow last year. Here is an informative RT interview with Michael Hudson. Military and geopolitical realities interact intimately with financial realities such as the value and acceptance of the dollar.

Read the business papers and periodicals -- WSJ, Barron's, Fortune, Business Week, The Economist. At least he will know biz speak. If he has a bit of time, look at magazines like Harper's and Atlantic Monthly. Try to get involved in groups where English is spoken or practiced (there's a...

Necessary, maybe, as the world's lingua franca, but I'm not sure how learnable it is for adults, or what level of mastery we're talking about. My father earnt a PhD from Bristol but he was never comfortable with reading anything more complex than Reader's Digest or Newsweek. His spoken English...

A useful article at Counterpunch:

Well-written and couldn't agree more but I've seen so-called instructors and professors who would fail this test, who don't have the foggiest understanding of what they're talking about, who dress up their ignorance in empty verbiage, and who respond to requests for clarification with more...

In the NYT:

An article in the NYT:

An article in the NYT:

This predates New Labour. A poly degree has always been seen as a second-class qualification (often with no justification). And vocational qualifications like ONC, OND, HNC, and HND have been seen as yet further down -- also with no good reason. The problem for British politicians -- as for...

First of all: excellent post. As I think I've said before, my opinion is the government has decided having a credentialed unemployed population is more expensive than a non-credentialed unemployed population. That there's no real logic in churning out hordes of graduates for whom no jobs exist...

It is an apt point. Body language -- including non-verbal signals -- is almost a science. But the meaning of the language varies from culture to culture. Not understanding the meaning is one of the big hurdles for those who jump across cultures. The complex system of non-verbal signals that...

Some Indian co-workers of my wife have joined an organisation called "Toastmasters": www.toastmasters.org Maybe something like this will work for you. I have doubts about it. As I see it, the speakers have nothing to say and just encourage one another by wildly applauding at every banal...

I'm not sure this is a serious post. People involved in math and computer programming tend to be loners, mavericks, introverts. If HR people expect you as a quant to be an extrovert, something is wrong. The ability to work in a team is something else, however. And evidence or arguments for this...

I'm not sure it's a caveat. I might suggest Rushton's Race, Evolution and Behavior, and Levin's Why Race Matters (Mike Levin is a professor of philosophy at CUNY). Rushton's argument is Darwinian: different environments select for different qualities. In particular, colder environments select...

They probably don't. And probably couldn't care less. But if your temperament is akin to that of Raskolnikov, perhaps your course of action is best. But try looking at it from another angle: schools are not releasing their placement rates -- deliberately, so as not to discourage prospective...

For decades I think there's been some sort of consensus among policy-makers, possibly tacit, that there's no need to get serious about scientific and engineering education because foreign talent can always be poached (from Britain, India, China, you name it). And this poached talent is cheaper...

The US didn't do so bad: For me it's an open question as to how and where to apportion the praise: Is it the Chinese educational system or the fact that North-East Asians have the highest average IQs in the world (~105 as compared to the European average of 100)? Is it nature or nurture? Only...