- Joined
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Hi all, just a funny or maybe a common question nowadays. A bit of my background, a computer vision + robotics researcher in Singapore. Considering MFE and have done some readings. But might not get much as I don't have formal econs/finance background:P
I am reading Martin Wolf's book on the recent financial crisis, and have talked to some of my dad's friends, few are in top management of Asian banks. Guess what? Everyone is telling me different stories about the financial crisis, or in particular, the reasons. I have been struggling with this question, what's wrong with the worldwide finance structure? Do we have specific answer like what we do for physics/engineering? The whole field looks like a chaos to me, good news today and the numbers go high, bad news tomorrow and the numbers go like roller coaster... After all, sorry to say but sometimes I doubt if those top finance people really understand what they are doing. Or they are just too concerned with their own salaries and bonuses.
About MFE, can you guys share your main motivation of going in? For me, I think mainly academic / intellectual challenge, I love maths+coding, of course, $ is one of the big reasons too. But I would not want to go into something that I can't agree with.
I think few people have actually criticized financial models that we use nowadays. To me, I doubt if these models are able to capture human behaviours that accurately. Or in other words, whether these models are physically meaningful. We can justify engineering models from basic physics principles, but I don't know if we have done that for finance. Or in broader sense, do you guys think these models or financial mathematics is the right direction to go? Finance is very much human oriented, mm... Seems to me that predictions / estimations never work in finance. Machine learning might be a better alternative, but its still a very big problem of aiming to capture human intelligence. I personally believe in Neural Networks but sadly, SVM is taking over now. Anyway, using unsupervised learning methods like NN or clustering in certain feature space to discover some still unknown knowledge makes more sense to me than mathematical modeling.
Once I was trying to develop a new method for image gradients, and I went into playing with codes, hoping for good numbers. Then my supervisor told me, without understanding, the whole thing is just garbage in garbage out:D Do we really understand the financial system now?
Any inputs / existing discussion threads? Apologise here for (if) my bad tone or too low level question for you all:P Thanks in advance for your time.
I am reading Martin Wolf's book on the recent financial crisis, and have talked to some of my dad's friends, few are in top management of Asian banks. Guess what? Everyone is telling me different stories about the financial crisis, or in particular, the reasons. I have been struggling with this question, what's wrong with the worldwide finance structure? Do we have specific answer like what we do for physics/engineering? The whole field looks like a chaos to me, good news today and the numbers go high, bad news tomorrow and the numbers go like roller coaster... After all, sorry to say but sometimes I doubt if those top finance people really understand what they are doing. Or they are just too concerned with their own salaries and bonuses.
About MFE, can you guys share your main motivation of going in? For me, I think mainly academic / intellectual challenge, I love maths+coding, of course, $ is one of the big reasons too. But I would not want to go into something that I can't agree with.
I think few people have actually criticized financial models that we use nowadays. To me, I doubt if these models are able to capture human behaviours that accurately. Or in other words, whether these models are physically meaningful. We can justify engineering models from basic physics principles, but I don't know if we have done that for finance. Or in broader sense, do you guys think these models or financial mathematics is the right direction to go? Finance is very much human oriented, mm... Seems to me that predictions / estimations never work in finance. Machine learning might be a better alternative, but its still a very big problem of aiming to capture human intelligence. I personally believe in Neural Networks but sadly, SVM is taking over now. Anyway, using unsupervised learning methods like NN or clustering in certain feature space to discover some still unknown knowledge makes more sense to me than mathematical modeling.
Once I was trying to develop a new method for image gradients, and I went into playing with codes, hoping for good numbers. Then my supervisor told me, without understanding, the whole thing is just garbage in garbage out:D Do we really understand the financial system now?
Any inputs / existing discussion threads? Apologise here for (if) my bad tone or too low level question for you all:P Thanks in advance for your time.
