There is plenty of blame to go around from the current global financial crisis. But, I would like to point out that it is not “all the quants’ fault.” We are all now, unfortunately, sitting in the middle of a high quality (and extremely expensive) lesson in financial mathematics. I […]
I have just posted a new write-up: Volunteers in Large Clubs: The Theorist’s View. This paper describes some interesting issues in organizing volunteers in a large club and tries to show (without math) how a theoretical computer scientist attacks such problems.
The current state of the global financial markets has gotten more people than usual worrying about the technical aspects of finance. One method for reasoning about investment returns and risk is a tool called the Sharpe Ratio. It is well worth reviewing this measure and seeing how, if used properly, […]
I recently had one of those “practitioner’s epiphanies” that I really feel captures the core of the issue and quickly explains a lot about mathematics. My current definition is: Mathematics is the minimal environment to preserve ideas.
Information week describes the current “Yahoo/Google deal” as being one that would “allow Yahoo to place Google ads on its site and collect the revenue.” But in reality it is a deal that will allow Google to sell Yahoo the rope to hang itself. To the theorist’s eye the deal […]
Hal Varian (Chief Economist, Google) recently shared a concise article with the title “How auctions set ad prices”. The article is a clear exposition of how ad prices determine the sorting order of bidders for online advertising. However, the tone of the article is not quite compatible with how it […]
Betting Best of Series is a new expository paper describing the mathematics involved in betting on something like the United States’ Major League Baseball World Series. It isn’t so much about baseball as about demonstrating some of the really great ideas from mathematical finance in a simplified setting. This sort […]
author: John Mount Nina and I just finished up our analysis of some of the statistical difficulties encountered by users of Google AdSense. It came out a bit long- but we found the right statistical reference to prove that there are real barriers to understanding in this market. The paper […]