What features would you like to see on Quantnet ?

Andy Nguyen

Andy Nguyen

Joined
5/2/06
Messages
12,166
Points
273
Since everyone here is part of what made Quantnet unique and successful, I'd like to know what you like to see on the next version of Quantnet which will be revealed early next year. Here are some tentative plans, some are already in the work.

1) Forum:
A new forum will be installed from the ground up with many, many more features

2) Blog :
If desired, a blog for each member will be created. The most viewed blog will be shown on the front page, etc. This would be a great way for our alumni to share their knowledge.

3) Quiz service :
Members will be able to take multiple choice quizzes in the areas of finance, programming, math. The quiz will have the same kind of questions you see in the job interview so it will help greatly.

4) Open source Quantnet coding project
Everyone in the community can contribute, correct, extend code.

If you have some ideas, please share. If you can research down to the details on how to implement that, it would be terrific.

Thanks all,
 
Andy,

Thanks for those wonderful offers. I especially like the Quiz and OpenSource ideas. Any details on how we can all help out if interested in some of the ideas?

Thanks!

Bridgett
 
Why not just use http://quantlib.org/ instead of re-implementing an open-source library of analytics? Creating a sustainable open source project will be tricky given the time contrainst of doing homework and exams. When you are looking to hand in your homework building a reusable framework is not top priority.

My suggestion would be for ambitious students to learn quantlib to do the homework problems and educate other students and faculty on its use. QuantLib in its raw form is hard to use and understand. In other for it to work well it needs to be repackage into a form that people with less technical skill can still be productive with. The QuantLib addin for Excel and Open Office attempts to do this.

I am going to propose to Dan on building an IT infrastructure in a week or so. I will let you know what comes of it.
 
Bridgett said:
Thanks for those wonderful offers. I especially like the Quiz and OpenSource ideas. Any details on how we can all help out if interested in some of the ideas?
Click to expand...
Yes, I'm very excited about them. Ultimately, we are the ones that benefit from it.
If you can compile a list of interview questions and answers in the form of multiple choice, it would be great.
RussianMike said:
Not everyone will have access to quiz? Only current students and alumni?
Click to expand...
Any QN member will be able to take it. It's our selling point. We can setup so that members who are not students can only access that after a certain number of posts.
Ultimately, we are open to the financial engineering community at large. We will make a name for ourself and Baruch Financial Engineering program will benefit.
Phat Loc said:
Why not just use http://quantlib.org/ instead of re-implementing an open-source library of analytics?
Click to expand...
I already brought this question up to our C++ instructors. While it's nice to know quantlib, it defeats the purpose of learning how to create the tools and doing hw. The same idea of why writing C++ LU class and not using Matlab to solve matrix decomposition.

On the other hand, I'm 100% support of the idea of doing something outside of the classroom. We can use quantlib,boost library and build on top of that. We are not limited by anything when we do our Quantnet project, right ?

Are you using quantlib or boost at work, Phat ?
 
Andy said:
Bridgett said:
Thanks for those wonderful offers. I especially like the Quiz and OpenSource ideas. Any details on how we can all help out if interested in some of the ideas?
Click to expand...
Yes, I'm very excited about them. Ultimately, we are the ones that benefit from it.
If you can compile a list of interview questions and answers in the form of multiple choice, it would be great.
Click to expand...

Andy,

I'm sure that many of us would be more than happy to compile that "list...", and it will be very, very benefitial to all of us. But do you remember that, according to you-know-who, we need to keep this type of information as confidential as possible?
 
Bridgett,
What I'm looking for is the type of brainteaser, fundamental questions which we learn/can find from many online sources. This is something I have in mind

Question: What is delta ?
Answer:
A) The rate of change for delta with respect to the underlying asset's price.
B) The amount that the price of an option changes compared to a 1% change in volatility.
C) A ratio comparing change in option price to a 1% change in option volatility
D) The ratio comparing the change in the price of the underlying asset to the corresponding change in the price of a derivative.

Correct answer: D

These are the info i got from investopedia.com. You can recycle/rephrase the questions. It's time-consuming but the one who compile the list will ultimately know the answers to all of these :)

The same thing for math, C++, etc so I'm looking for a huge dataset to work with.
 
I already brought this question up to our C++ instructors. While it's nice to know quantlib, it defeats the purpose of learning how to create the tools and doing hw. The same idea of why writing C++ LU class and not using Matlab to solve matrix decomposition.

On the other hand, I'm 100% support of the idea of doing something outside of the classroom. We can use quantlib,boost library and build on top of that. We are not limited by anything when we do our Quantnet project, right ?
Click to expand...

I disagree on that it will defeat the purpose of learning how to create the tools and hw. I am fairly certain that not every student that enters the program wants to get a job programming these models. I for one rather make business decisions using them. This is how I see the landscape:

1. Students: Get good grades and learn the skill set to get the job. You need the good grades to show the gatekeeper, i.e. HR.

2. Faculty: Teach what you know and can grade. If you don't know these libraries then how will you grade them or plan your course around them? Place students into jobs.

3. Firms: Make money! In other words make great business decisions. This involves being productive and efficient, i.e. using models and knowing their limitations. Part of this involves building an infrastructure and hiring people to implement these models.

What drives research in Financial Engineer? My is bet is business needs, i.e. I need to decide on something and I have no idea how to make the correct choice.

I hope to use the natural synergy of the three parties to change the landscape.

1. Students: Pleasing the gatekeeper can only go so far. Think of evolution in the peacock case. There is grade inflation and just the simple fact that most times the person screen candidates don't have the technical knowledge to discern. Therefore will resort to branding and marketing of a program to measure people. The paradigm shift should be to create and utilize a professional network, i.e. bypass the gatekeeper. Build working relationships with potential employers and show them what value new hires can add. This makes the economy more efficient and leads to better hiring decisions.

2. Faculty: Research is peer reviewed or used by industry. My suggestion is for student and alumni and faculty to work together and train each other. Picture yourself as a researcher, wouldn't it be great to have access to other researchers and firms that are interested in your ideas? Imagine per say you are researching Term Structure models would you want to re-invent the wheel and create matrix manipulation code and random number generators? Or focus on the problem you are actually interested in?

3. Firms: Are here to make business decision that have positive economic impact. Implementing models is an means to an end. Unless that is what you sell. I think what would impress an employer the most is if you can look at their business and tell them where they can improve. To have a shot at that you will need infrastructure and experience using these models not just implementing them. If such an infrastructure of software, people and knowledge existed at Baruch then we should be able to attract employers.

This is my take on things. I could be wrong so please read the above with a skeptical eye.
 
In my company, we use sharepoint for project management. (I'm not sure if sharepoint is free or not.) But it's really a good tool to share software, books, doc, and do version control. If I'm in Baruch, I will definitely need this kind of tool.
Andy, pls take this into consideration. FTP is also a good option.
 
Thanks for the suggestions, Erica. I looked up Sharepoint and it's Microsoft's office collaborate suit so it's not free and we will have to own our server to set it up.
We have ftp servers and files can be uploaded to this forum via attachments. The idea of groupware has been brought up before by Phat but I don't think we found one that meets our needs.
Keep the ideas coming. Thanks.
 
Is anyone interested in a blog feature on Quantnet ? Every member of Quantnet has their own blog with features just like blogger.com such as guest's comments, pic, etc... ?

Any other features you think we must/should have ?
 
What happened with quizzes? I could probably compile a few probability/statistics questions.

Like this one: Explain the meaning of \(E[\bar{X}]=\mu\)
 
Andy said:
Is anyone interested in a blog feature on Quantnet ? Every member of Quantnet has their own blog with features just like blogger.com such as guest's comments, pic, etc... ?

Any other features you think we must/should have ?
Click to expand...

Thats great.

Can we some how make chat rooms more active.
I don't know the answer but this may help the 'knowing' faster.
Kapil
 
kapil354 said:
Thats great.

Can we some how make chat rooms more active.
I don't know the answer but this may help the 'knowing' faster.
Kapil
Click to expand...

Good question :) To make the chat rooms more active we need at least a few people to be online at the same time, which is not easy.
 
I really like this new tag cloud. It is now my goal to make the tags more balanced to reduce the size of Baruch MFE and MFE Candidate Profile :)

If anyone wants to help tagging old posts, please PM me; I'll help coordinate forums/topics. Even if you spend an hour opening up threads; scanning down them; adding a few appropriate tags (just concentrate on the same few consistent tags if you can), that should would be a huge help.

Andy has been doing the Computing forum already. I did most of the Recommended Books forum.
 
Latest Posts/Threads

The latest posts/threads only show the newest 15 posts. If I read QN only every other day I'd miss some new posts with lesser responses. I hope there is a folder that shows all the unread posts since my last visit. Thanks.
 
To see all new posts since your last visit, click on the New Posts on the navigation bar (between Member list and Quick Links).
You can also see more than 15 latest posts at any time by click on Top 15 Stats -> View More
 
Question: why do live search and regular search differ so much? Live search seems to be better, perhaps we can use that one instead.
 
Live Search uses ajax and search only thread titles.
Regular search is more flexible and can search for post/thread from a specific user, search for content of a post, search from a specific forum, etc.
The next version of forum will have a much better search engine that search site-wide: blog, forum, photo comment, etc.
 
Back
Top Bottom