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John Derbyshire's take on the situation. I offer it without comment (as there are people who may object vehemently). There's a saying, "Go woke, go broke." https://www.unz.com/jderbyshire/as-a-former-credit-suisse-risk-management-shlub-i-ask-is-dei-bringing-down-the-banking-system/

I dunno about that. Is the US banking system safe and well-capitalized? But more importantly, will we again have to endure Biden's vacuous and meaningless grin as he assures us that all is well with the American economy? This is the real issue...

I would say go for it. It's fully funded. Try to learn some interesting and useful math in the process. Employers can go to the devil. The problem with the MFE is cramming too much into too little time. But you won't have that pressure here. UMass Amherst is not a bad school.

https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/the-rise-and-fall-of-peer-review

Capinski and Zastawniak's Mathematics for Finance.

Dicey. Very dicey. Better have a fallback position or Plan B. On the bright side any number of bum MFE programs will be happy to take your money.

Enlightening essay by Cedric Durand in the current NLR: https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii138/articles/cedric-durand-the-end-of-financial-hegemony

Ben Garling used to be at Cambridge and probably the three volumes of his analysis book were and are being used for Parts 1 and 2 in DPMMS. Work through that book. It's better than most American texts.

Throw away the economics courses -- waste of time. Nothing wrong with applied math but make sure you get a year of real analysis, one semester of ODEs, and at least one semester of PDEs. Two semesters of statistics. A course in probability.

All these beginners books? How antiquated are they? Of course they're antiquated: they're introducing people, often with little or no coding experience, to C++. The more recondite and au courant aspects of C++ can wait until a second or third pass. You can't learn to run if you can't even walk...

Use GCC, preferably on a Linux system. And there are enough basic C++ books around so that one doesn't go into a course like this completely ignorant.

Britain is in seriously bad shape. Your bosses won't be doing you a favor by moving you there. I would stay on in India. The grass always looks greener on the other side.

MMFInfoAcct just told you. Maybe work on that V163 ....

I use two criteria to judge whether someone is a gentleman: 1) the watch on his wrist, and 2) his mastery of Latin.

Other than Garling's three volumes, there's also the thre volumes by Amman and Escher, which can again be unequivocally recommended. And also the books by David Bressoud. Zorich is fine as well. I just don't see the rationale in using a book which came out when Elvis Pressley was singing "You...

That Rudin is still being used just goes to show how ossified US math departments are. My theory is you have all these 60- and 70-something math professors in US universities using the book out of sheer inertia, and because it's what they used in their youth. The same for using Ahlfors for...

If you are ambitious, put some effort into finding out what books there are on real analysis, and which one/s would suit you. Don't expect to be spoon-fed.

It's not just Rudin. There are several other books on the list I don't think should be there. If bozos like this designed the reading list and are in charge of the program, what does it say about the program?

Try "The Bond and Money Markets" by Moorad Choudhry, published by Butterworh-Heinemann.

The further down the list you go, the slimmer they become. There's a reason why the competition to get into CMU or Baruch or Princeton is white-hot. It doesn't mean that if you earn an MFE from Dogdick University, you can't become a quant at an established firm -- merely that your odds are much...

This is perhaps the single best advanced calculus text on the market and has been for the last fifteen or twenty years. It used to be the prescribed text (postscript: at Cornell) for freshmen who had earned a 5 in AP calculus (BC) in high school. It's also used at other universities by freshmen...

Probably more bilateral trading -- I give you oil or wheat and you give me something you manufacture. The USA and Britain are in a poor condition for this as, for example, the USA has been running current account deficits for at least the last quarter century and there's perhaps not so much...

Cast your eye over the history of finance. Until the early '70s, finance used to be a sleepy backwater. The explosion of financial markets -- and by implication quant finance -- occurred after the US went off the gold standard and became completely a fiat currency. This operated in conjunction...

C++ might survive for the next fifty years but it's not clear finance will.

Don't overdo it. Slow and steady wins the race. And usually less is more. Machine learning is an ocean unto itself. Monte Carlo simulation takes time to absorb. Likewise for statistics. The same for Brownian motion and stochastic calculus. Start listing the books you will use for each -- in the...

Maybe they're testing your ingenuity in lying. No-one's going to tell the truth (assuming they know what their weakness is). No-one's going to say they can't control their alcohol consumption, they embezzle money, they visit prostitutes too often. Instead, "Well, I do have a weakness for...

Not to be the bearer of bad news but for reasons beyond anyone's control, the finance industry in both the USA and Europe is going to suffer a massive reduction in size and numbers employed. And so, if the job market hasn't been anything great the last several years, it's going to become bleaker...

Good news. A win-win for Russia and India. https://www.cnbctv18.com/economy/rupee-ruble-trade-to-be-ready-by-next-week-report-12931362.htm

Agreed. But the OP wanted to "really stick out" and since this is in a population of high achievers I couldn't think of anything else. You don't even have to place top in Putnam -- any score higher than 20 (out 0f 120) is good. I think the median score is still 0.

Get a high score in the Putnam Competition. If you want to stick out in an army of applicants, many of whom will be going to better schools than yours, this is the way.

Another AZOV chieftain flees to Poland. But he is not -- I repeat not -- a Nazi. How do I know? Because Zelensky is Jewish. So there.

Your level of discussion -- which I've seen invariably reduces to personal insults and taunting -- is interesting. If this is the way you teach ....

This is just one assertion after another and for 'source' -- I use the term rashly -- you use Wikipedia. All sources running contrary to Western media -- which in the US is in the hands of six media groups -- have either been banned or gone underground.

I've noticed that your debating style is to employ ad hominems against anyone you don't agree with, without engaging with the content. Thus anything on RT must be garbage -- but somehow US and British sources are sacrosanct, and if they say a hospital was bombed then, by golly, it must be so...

Some good discussion here. I don't know how long the video will survive on YouTube.

Some trenchant analysis from the pen (or probably keyboard) of Gilbert Doctorow: https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2022/03/17/this-is-how-the-world-ends/ I could use a stiff drink. Four legs good, two legs better.

Napoleon is always right. I will work harder. Four legs, two legs bad.

News from the front isn't too good: Comrade Ogilvy single-handedly wiped out a Russian division of 15,000 men yesterday.

The list was initially made when Fred Flintstone was alive and Tyrannosaurus Rex roamed the earth. It probably needs to be redone from the ground up.

Even if you could pass the interview without C++, why would you want to? As far as I know there are five Baruch courses that demand C++. You'll be thrown in at the deep end. If you can't already code proficiently in C++, you will drown.

One thing that should be discussed here is the declining influence of the US and concomitantly, the erosion of the dollar as global reserve. Because this will have an impact on the financial services industry, which as I pointed out earlier, is the handmaiden of US empire. Financial services...

Good one from Anglin: https://www.unz.com/aanglin/new-sanction-us-bans-all-import-or-export-of-dollars-to-russia/

Good insights from Pepe Escobar. https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2022/03/10/cutting-through-fog-masking-new-page-in-art-of-war/

Brooks, for chrissake. An establishment stooge if ever there was one. And the NYT (and WashPo) are establishment organs just like Pravda was in the USSR. The West is fighting this as a propaganda was -- partly because it can't fight this as a real one (it will be obliterated if it tries). And...

Okay, now about that 'hospital' in Mariupol, the information now trickling through indicates Azov people were on the rooftop with heavy weaponry and furthermore the 'hospital' had been an Azov barracks for a couple of years. Plus some crisis actors were employed (and have now been identified)...

Another good one from Tucker Carlson, this one on the US-funded (and probably operated) biolabs in Ukraine, which the Z man was talking about.

For the last 8 years by the Azov Battalion against ethnic Russians in the Donbass region and the Ukrainian government not doing anything with regard to the Minsk Accords, aided in this truculence by a nod and wink from the USA and NATO. With the USA wanting to incorporate Ukraine (and Georgia)...

The coverage in Western mass media is deliberately stripping the issue of all historical context. The mass media story in essence is that one fine day the evil and vile Putin, who is also stark raving mad and the reincarnation of Hitler, decided to invade innocent and virginal Ukraine. There the...

With regard to the invasion, both are on the same page. The exception is Tucker Carlson on Fox. I've never seen this level of concerted propaganda and shutting down or censoring of alt news to this extent. It's approaching the level of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. With regard to war...

This beggars belief: Saudi and UAE refuse to take Biden's phone call. Reported in the WSJ. Biden is desperate for oil.

And a good one from Pepe Escobar today. Europe is going down the toilet, with the USA some distance behind. https://www.unz.com/pescobar/russian-judo-tears-the-west-apart/

More than one reason. One is the bribe money -- Hunter Biden's directorship in an Ukrainian company is just the tip of the iceberg. But beyond personal considerations is the geopolitical one of remaining the hegemon, with the USD as global reserve. A few good essays to point to. One is by Nick...

More from Ugo Bardi:

Not the foggiest, I'm afraid. The link was posted on Ugo Bardi's "Seneca Effect" page on FB and I copied it from there.

All I know is the party line is become more draconian by the day. So you want to protect yourself by going two steps beyond today's party line. This is even worse than French wine being poured down the gutter and french fries becoming freedom fries in 2003. Just look at this, for example, to...

Comrade, we all have to make sacrifices in this time of crisis. If Russian vodka is being poured down gutters and the Russians are being banned from the Eurovision song contest, it is not too much to eschew splitting methods (whatever they are).

I hear that the University of Milan has just banned the teaching of Dostoevsky. We all have to pitch in at this time of crisis so how far can we go in quant finance if throw out the contribution of Kolmogorov (i.e., all measure-theoretic probability)? Will we be roughly at the level of Feller?

Unrealistic time frame.

If I can get away with a sweeping statement, economics is mostly garbage. It's elite ideology often dressed in fancy mathematics. Economists are propagandists for the status quo. Sasan Fayazmanesh puts it more eloquently than I could...

It used to be, over a decade back. Then it appears to have stumbled and there were some critical and negative reviews of the program here in Quantnet in years past. If you check Quantnet ratings, it is currently ranked as #12, sandwiched between Georgia Tech and North Carolina State.

Any program outside the leading seven or eight programs -- CMU, Berkeley, Baruch, Princeton, NYU, etc. Employers tend to be sceptical of these programs and they are not their 'target schools.' Some of these second-tier programs do make an effort and try to 'up their game.' Others are thinly...

Vector calculus is needed for electrodynamics and fluid mechanics. I don't see it much used in finance

Neither of the two courses provides a reference to a physical book. Why is this?

No. No reputable program.

This seems to be the best one-paragraph explanation of financial engineering I've ever seen: https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-air-coming-out/

I wouldn't bother. But if you're weak in ODEs and PDEs, I would spend some time on those.

At this stage of the game there's not much you can do. It's not that you're a weak student -- it's simply the fierce competition for limited seats at the leading programs. You want to be applying to the leading seven or eight programs (which is what you're doing anyway). If you get admitted to...

*Shrug* -- yours will probably be another run-of-the-mill application to the leading programs. Not exceptional, not the worst.

The US system is definitely a Ponzi scheme. But to keep a Ponzi scheme running you need more and more people entering the scheme to pay off the earlier people. That's not happening in the USA. And of course -- not that I need to mention it -- young people entering the workforce these days are...

If you think the German state robs you (which it probably does), the US system is even worse. Social security contributions are essentially just another tax, which the federal government spends whichever way it pleases. Then the social security payments you receive are not indexed to real...

Always a pleasure to listen to Michael Hudson:

One more suggestion is "The Theory of Probability" by Venkatesh.

A couple I might suggest are 1) "Measure, Integral, and Probability" by Capinski and Kopp (everything by Capinski is well-written), and, at a greater level of sophistication 2) "An Introduction to Measure-Theoretic Probability" by Roussas.

Dineen is a good book but I can't recommend it for learning probability and acquiring computational skill. Likewise for Williams. Do you already have a background in non-measure-theoretic probability? That's arguably the first priority.

Meanwhile, here is today's post from the Z man. Another good one:

More like this, I would have thought:

He is niche. Most people would probably classify him as 'white nationalist' and he would probably not demur. He also writes frequently for Takimag.

The Z blog is the first thing I search for every morning from Monday to Friday. I didn't realize anyone else on this forum also perused it. This is one of my favorites: https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=23711

CHS comes out with fine essays time and again, and this is one such occasion. https://www.oftwominds.com/blogsept21/smart-dropping-out9-21.html

Interesting essay by the Archdruid. https://www.ecosophia.net/the-negative-sum-economy/

What mathematics do you have under your belt? Be specific in terms of topics. Which math books have you studied? Give titles and authors. If you literally have no math beyond high school algebra, try Aaron Brown's "Red-Blooded Risk" for starters. But after that you will need at least some...

In the USA every crook gets another chance (except for Madoff and Epstein).

An instructive piece by Michael Hudson: https://michael-hudson.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Hudson_Valdai116.pdf

There are many Indian IT companies -- doesn't mean they're any good. A strange criterion ....

https://www.rbth.com/science-and-tech/333855-why-are-russian-programmers-best-in-the-world

This doesn't mean anything to anyone. If you want specific and detailed responses give a detailed account of what topics you know and your level of command of each topic, plus the books you use.

The code library is at the publisher's website. Smart pointers are covered on pp194-197 (briefly because this is an introductory book for people who don't kmow any C++). Typedef is covered in the STL chapter (pp 303-306). With regard to price it seems to be comparable to your own C++ book...

It was published in 2017 and covers C++ 11 features. Pedagogically speaking it's a masterpiece. Anyone taking your basic C++ course should also have this book at their side. As for price -- *shrug* -- you get what you pay for.

John Armstrong's "C++ for Financial Mathematics" isn't bad.

For some reason almost no-one mentions McDonald's "Derivatives Markets", which I think can give Hull a run for his money.

I agree with you. The book is garbage. There are so many other more attractive options available.

In other words they want trained and experienced C++ programmers -- but don't want to go to the time and expense of training them themselves. Typical. I've got no sympathy for them.

It's all over the country -- not just NYC. East Asians are seen as fair game. Keep in mind the majority of attacks are coming from blacks (something the US mass media studiously avoids mentioning). https://abc13.com/asian-hate-crime-houston-korean-store-attack-jung-kim-racist/10448031 If you...

Every MFE program (save the amazingly affordable Baruch program) is a cash cow. It's just that the good ones give something of worth in return -- solid education, placement offices, interview preparation.

Interesting post by Dmitry Orlov today: http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2021/03/getting-hyperinflation-right.html

On a side note, that book by Strang is very useful and very well-written.

A Richard Mille is probably throwing your money away. But if you're wearing your grandfather's Patek, it shouldn't be held against you.

At some stage (even for MFE) you will have to take some course on functions of several variables. Metric space theory will be indispensable there.

Warwick has a really strong math department -- probably second only to Cambridge.

What was your AP Calc grade? A 4 or a 5? I presume it was AB calc rather than BC calc? What's your list of books for foundational math? For calc? For linear algebra? For probability? What's on your reading list generally? The online Python programming courses are usually nothing great. Ideally...

This forum is probably not the place to talk about these things. Finance professionals are not trained to think and talk about these things -- more accurately, they're trained to not think and talk about these things. The global economic system is in a state of slow-motion collapse. Financial...

Easily. But Covid is not the culprit: it has merely accelerated underlying tendencies. Weimar Germany was printing money. The USA is printing money.

https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2021/02/15/a-failure-of-complexity/

You don't know what you're talking about. I've seen Ghrist's work before. I don't know whether you got this in a hurried Google search to prove me wrong. This is not a serious application of cutting-edge algebraic topology. I'm wondering what kind of background you have in the subject.

Why not familiarize yourself with, for example, index theory so you have a clearer idea of what you're talking about? Or the more recent work of Witten?

The use of differential geometry was in the air after Riemann, Levi-Civita, and Ricci. These other links you're posting can be dismissed. You're arguing for the sake of arguing and scoring some points.

Nowhere. Pure math. Some theoretical physicists take a stab at using some of this material (cohomology, sheaf theory, fibre bundles). Over the last 40 years or so a major research direction has been using physics to understand mathematics (rather than the other way around). People like Atiyah...

Wallace is an old text and not very inspiring. Fulton is more interesting in that it has a foray into algebraic curves as well, including Riemann-Roch.

The research frontier has moved on. After undergrad courses in linear algebra, differential equations, differential geometry, complex analysis, etc., no way are you prepared to start even baby research. Not in pure math at least.

It's just sheer lunacy to assign Hartshorne as first reading to grad students. There have been perfectly capable grad students who have struggled with Hartshorne for two years and then given up their Ph.D. in disgusted failure. Hartshorne should be approached after having gone through three or...

Ugo's latest, on why virtual sex ain't as good as the real thing. https://thesenecaeffect.blogspot.com/2021/02/why-science-is-like-sex-virtual-version.html Or in more polite language, why science in late capitalism (i.e., sclerotic financialization and bureaucracy) has been going down the...

Um, I'm not blaming them for doing PDEs and not homeomorphisms. Someone has to do the gritty and unpleasant work of PDEs so that the more poetic and artistic types can prove theorems in etale cohomology. It's that old Morlock/Eloi divide.

Not really a common language -- not past the idea of continuity. One step past continuity to homeomorphism and you've already lost the PDE crowd.

Nope, it's basically a year and a half of grad courses crammed into one year. For example take a look at this course: https://www.maths.cam.ac.uk/postgrad/part-iii/files/misc/2020-21%20Guide/Algebraic%20Geometry/Algebraic%20Geometry.pdf Even at good US universities this will be a second-year...

I don't know about now but I remember that in my day a 2:1 from Cambridge wasn't enough to get admitted to the Part III (in mathematics). The Part III is demanding and punishing and it's designed to give a solid foundation to prospective research students (I think you need a Distinction in Part...

At a mid-tier British university, the fourth year will be roughly the same as the third, but with slightly more advanced courses. It won't be like a Cambridge Part 3 or the Warwick M.Sc. Probably the Warwick third-year undergrad courses will be like your fourth year. The point of saying all this...

Looks like London is changing rapidly as well, though not because of crime: https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2021/02/09/london-the-first-global-city-to-fail/

Probably the idea is to use the brand name and the placement services. But that aside, there's a difference in coursework between top-tier programs and the ersatz bum programs, even if the courses have the same name. Edit: Though having covered some of the material already, even if ill-taught...

Make up some malarkey of travelling the world on a voyage of self-discovery.

You're only fooling yourself. You will never get fluent sitting in a class with other people in the same position as you. I went through the same process when I was learning Norwegian in Norway. The only way you become fluent is when you interact with locals.

Anyone who talks like this in the USA is upper middle class or above and went to a private school. Maybe a WASP. I might change the sentence slightly: "I don't smoke but were I to smoke, I would smoke Marlboro."

Hindi is Indo-European but it won't help much in learning a European language.

They're both technically insolvent -- but I think the same applies to the big French and Italian banks as well.

With regard to gold and silver, these ideas apply to the paper market. And not of course the physical market. Hardcore committed investors in gold and silver are insisting on physical possession and physical delivery. It's the paper market that's responsible for the manipulation of the price --...

What you are saying makes sense. Silver is not likely to be their kind of thing. These people are speculators and not in it for the long haul.

Looks like the Reddit crowd is now going after silver. Gold and silver have been among the most manipulated markets in the world.

The decision is yours (and I'm glad I don't have to make it). Just make sure the salary figures and the placement rates you get for the programs are accurate. Baruch is a good program but not expensive. Private schools are more expensive than state schools, true. Quite a few people think they're...

By Matt Taibbi. This one is beautiful. https://taibbi.substack.com/p/suck-it-wall-street

I don't have a fixed opinion on this. There seems to be a loose consensus here on this site (or there used to be) that the top 7 programs were the ones to aim for. There are quite a few "bum programs" in the top 20. They're cheaper than the top programs for a reason -- the teaching isn't great...

It was originally published on a white nationalist site and Unz also is white nationalist (lite). Mainstream media does not provide this kind of reporting and analysis.

Not that I am aware of. That's why it's so important to get into a good program, to know the placement rates, and to make sure you are prepared and hit the ground running, so to speak. Also, it's false economy to choose some bum program merely because it's a little cheaper. This has to be a...

This two-faced haramzadi ....

https://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=22689

https://www.unz.com/article/bonfire-of-the-shorts/

Upper-class English accent -- maybe RP (received pronunciation). A welcome relief from US accents, which are as harsh and abrasive as those of Shagrat and Gorbag.

Th confidence that a good watch imparts (the watch here is a Rolex Day-Date Yellow Gold):

The C++ and Python is not where the problem lies -- you can learn these at any time. But math requires a slow and careful buildup, usually over years. With analysis, it's not so much prior calculus knowledge that's a stumbling block -- in theory one can do analysis without knowing any calculus...

Royden is a graduate level text. I can't believe it is being used as an undergrad text at a Turkish university. The Kolmogorov book is also not easy, despite its title. I don't understand the choice as there are several excellent undergraduate analysis texts on the market. Lang and Blyth and...

Yours?

Works like "nefret" and "dushman" (as well as many others in the song) will be recognised by any Urdu speaker. Anyway, back to the matter at hand: what books does your university use for real analysis and linear algebra and what are the topics covered? Probability and ordinary differential...

I should be ashamed of myself as the word for "fairy" in Urdu is almost the same (pari) : پری

I visited Turkey, Georgia, and Armenia a year and a half back. In Turkey I was in Istanbul, Ankara, Amasya, and Trabzon (ie., mostly Anatolia and the towns that Kemal Ataturk liked so much). I have also taken some Turkish lessons as I believe Turkey will be the heart of the Ottoman Empire 2.0...

By the way, what does "denizperi" mean? "Deniz" means sea, but what does 'peri" mean? Dweller?

If you're going into stochastic theory seriously, then real analysis is indispensable. It seems to cover the same material as calculus but with this annoying obsession with careful definitions, statements of theorems, and proofs. It's a different way of thinking -- more abstract and conceptual...

They're garish and gaudy to my mind. In your face. Brash and insolent and lacking in dignity. I'm of the school of thought that a gentleman's watch should be discreet and unobtrusive, with an understated style and elegance.

In that case a quartz watch or even your cell phone will serve you fine. A $10 Casio digital watch will give you more accurate time than a $20,000 Rolex. And indeed that cheap Casio watch is exactly what Bill Gates wears -- he wants merely an accurate timepiece and he has it. But his friend and...

You have to be careful -- there are expensive watches out there that are not worth the thousands (even tens of thousands) you shell out for them. Hublot is perhaps one such example. This is one reason people go for known brand names like Rolex -- though to my mind Rolex is over-priced for what...

These are all good watches -- PP and AP are two members of the holy trinity (PP, AP, and VC). Both VC and Lange cost serious money. Other good brands are Breguet and F.P. Journe (though I think it's difficult to get hold of the latter). Oh, and I forgot to mention Jaeger Le Coultre (which is...

As another poster has pointed out, people generally don't notice. But also, they can't tell the difference between a quality watch and one that tries to imitate it (but at a much lower price). Frederique Constant comes to mind as one such brand. Here's the scathing opinion of Archie Luxury:

That applies with ever more force to quality watches where you can usually recoup most or even all ofyour money if you go for an Omega, Rolex, or better (and of course provided you've kept the box and papers). But you can't do that if you buy something for, say, $800. That is, you'll take a hit...

I agree with everything in your post (i.e., I don't need a watch and I started this discussion not because I need one but simply to diversify the discussion away from the same dreary lot). Longines used to be a good brand (it's older than Rolex and Omega) but it never really recovered from the...

These people make instructive videos on real watches:

There's no promo for the high-end watches. But you can haggle with the authorized dealers and it's best to buy on the grey market, if you can. Also a good idea to buy on the used market (but from a reputable seller, as there are fakes and "frankenwatches" galore).

Ah, now we're entering acceptable territory. Rolex is the low end of the high end. On a side note, the discussion on a watch forum is whether the watch was gifted to him by China, Ukraine, or Wall Street.

The Casio uses a -- *shudder* -- quartz movement and the Apple doesn't even have a movement. I can't imagine creating a good impression with timepieces like this (in fact Apple is not even a timepiece). I want a watch that whispers "upper management."

What kind of wristwatch should a quant wear to make a good impression? At what kind of price point?

Out of the question. Are you serious or is this just another troll post?

Since Professor Bardi has condescended to write here and since I'm a great fan of his, let me mention in passing a couple of recent books of his, both published by Springer. The first is The Seneca Effect and the second Before the Collapse. Here is Prof Bardi saying a few words about his second...

Here is someone asking about Bliss's theorem. The person responding is clueless: https://sci.math.narkive.com/zjaL1JN9/bliss-s-theorem Here someone has excerpted the theorem and outline proof of Bliss's theorem from some old book...

Probably the same thing as the principle. You find it discussed in the old advanced calculus texts but never modern. You need it to justify, among other things, the formula for arc length, which these days is just defined as an integral (without giving any idea of where it came from). It's...

You'd be wasting your time taking a full-blown course on Lebesgue integration. In Klebaner's book on stochastic processes there's coverage of different kinds of integration -- Riemann, Riemann-Stieltjes, Lebesgue, Lebesgue-Stieltjes, and Ito. That's probably all you'll need (maybe more than what...

Out if curiosity, is anyone here acquainted with Bliss's Theorem and/or Duhamel's Principle? None of the modern texts seem to mention them.

I'm part of a group of "Upper West Side Residents" so I get news pertaining to the UWS. But I imagine something similar is true for other parts of the city.

I keep reading these stories about the NYC sub: https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/ny-naked-man-subway-electrocution-20210116-dmqab3kqk5gujalkc77buyb6ui-story.html

Fischer was sui generis. In the the period 1970 to 1972 the difference in rating between him and his closest rivals (Spassky, Larsen, Petrosian) was perhaps the greatest ever seen. But there were reasons for the public attention: he was young and photogenic; he was eccentric and made outrageous...

The book was dramatic, with just about every game not only ending in a win (or loss) but a win or loss in spectacular style (i.e., mating attack). Yet around 55% of games among strong grandmasters (i.e. FIDE rating of over 2600) end in draws. And even where the result is a win, it's often a dry...

Those 300 points are very hard to gain -- it's like trying to scale a vertical rock face with no handholds or footholds. You are playing experienced, skilled, and knowledgeable players and trying to beat them consistently. Decades ago Botvinnik made the trivial observation that getting to the...

An authentic prodigy, though I don't know if he is still playing.

I read the book back in 1987, while taking a bus from Biggleswade to Cambridge. It was a riveting read. But a little -- how to put it politely? -- unrealistic. Later I found out that the author (Tevis) was a middling player himself (probably rated between 1400 and 1500) and so couldn't be...

Has anyone watched "The Queen's Gambit" series on Netflix? General impressions?

The admissions people must have seen something in your background that indicates you will get through the program -- unless they're being even more mercenary than usual and just want your money. Let us assume the first. That means you can do the math but don't like it (which is way better than...

No, I didn't say that either. But if there's a way of circumventing it -- taking some analysis course that uses a more modern text, one not so terse and opaque, then one should go for it.

He asked for "thoughts." I gave them.

425a is using Baby Rudin, and I'm not a keen fan of the book. It came out almost 70 years ago and should be in a nursing home for the elderly. The course on vector analysis and differential geometry looks interesting, particularly as the book being used is the relatively modern Pressley...

You probably still don't need 471, which will focus on the structure theorems of linear algebra. If you're interested in abstract algebra it will be great fun. But probably not pertinent to quant finance.

471 is not a first course in linear algebra. Unless you've taken a prior course in linear algebra and/or abstract algebra, you will have problems. The pre-req for 471 is 410. On a side note, it's not clear to me that you need 471. Also note that 425a is using Baby Rudin. Unless you have some...

Some of the companies think that having a Ph.D. is more than having, say, an MFE. I'm not saying they are right in their judgement. Maybe they think having a Ph.D. shows commitment and intellectual stamina -- who knows? But in a buyer's market -- one in which they are flooded with Ph.D. and MFE...

Okay, the rationale behind the video essay is plausible: the written essay could be plagiarized or written by someone else. A video essay is more likely to be authentic.

Is writing not in vogue any more?

Fundamental investing is dead and has been since at least 2008 (maybe even earlier). As for "quantitative investing", that's a misnomer. I'm not even clear as to what it means. I don't know who has been filling your head with this drivel.

Interesting post by Ugo Bardi, who is a professor of physical chemistry at the U of Florence. https://cassandralegacy.blogspot.com/2020/12/the-fall-of-citadels-of-science.html

I'm sick and tired of living in the USA. I'd rather live in Sweden.

Meanwhile, on NYC's subway system: https://nypost.com/2020/11/20/police-union-boss-mta-riders-on-their-own-amid-violence-uptick

At the end of WW2, New York City, with its environs, was a manufacturing hub. But the jobs steadily left, initially to the non-unionised US south, and later to Mexico. NYC's financial crisis of 1975 provided the raison d'etre for neoliberal reforms (which were later extended to the USA as a...

These are figures for carjackings in Chicago and DC but I daresay something similar has occurred in NYC. https://www.unz.com/isteve/carjackings-up-120-in-chicago/

Always a pleasure to listen to Bill Holter and Jim Sinclair. The talk show is not the brightest spark but his redeeming virtue is that he often has well-informed and astute guests.

It's a bullshit word, sorry to say. The term "quant strategies" was probably concocted by some corporate empty suit. If you're forced to discuss it, you'll find yourself having to talk specious and vague bullshit. On a side note some of us were discussing the difference between tactics and...

Probably not since AFAIK, they typically don't involve intense coding. What I would really like is some course on programming to involve creating a rudimentary chess engine. This is not as difficult as it sounds but it seems that neither authors nor publishers are interested in putting out a...

These intro programming courses are almost invariably vacuous and mind-numbing horseshit, with a focus on syntax and brainless coding projects. The problem is that if you do well on them, it doesn't mean much of anything but if you do poorly, it raises eyebrows. Find a non-trivial programming...

https://www.unz.com/article/anti-chinese-racism-sets-stage-for-new-mccarthyism/

If you won't say it, I'll say it: I see no reason why the South Dakota rally should not have taken place. Show me the number of deaths and seriously sick that unequivocally ensued from the rally and I may revise my opinion. Otherwise the fabricated number of "250,000 cases" is simply devoid of...

Trump is a moron. The majority of deaths that can be attributed to the virus are mostly septuagenarians and octogenarians in nursing homes, most of whom have other health complications. At the moment if I die from an automobile accident and they discover COVID-19 in my system (as they probably...

Just more baloney.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/30/nyregion/nyc-suburbs-housing-demand.html

Do you mean Jackie Onassis?

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/when-half-of-nycs-tax-base-leaves-and-never-comes-back/

Where is Batman?