Posts tagged as:

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Philosophies of risk management, briefly

November 18, 2009

My last post made me think of a common question in risk management: "what is risk?" A lot of time is spent deciding the various metrics, exposures, values, sensitivities, etc. that are considered "risks." In the previous post, a simple change of perspective - is risk defined by dollars invested or shares controlled? - resulted [...]

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The most important news you will read this week

October 15, 2009

It was buried deep, deep in the Arts section of Tuesday's NYT, but nonetheless, sitting in an airport food court, I found it: ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide’ Sequel Lands in Britain Apparently it is not standard practice for British men and women to gather dressed in bathrobes and toting towels. When hundreds of fans thus clad assembled [...]

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The rise of VaR

October 1, 2009

Simon Johnson and James Kwak take a look at how VaR got to be so popular in the first place. They make the insightful observation that a bad (or at least an incomplete) model can gain acceptance not only because of its simplicity but, oddly, because of its output as well. Indeed, VaR succeeded not [...]

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How did I miss this?

July 1, 2009

In a post called "So Long and Thanks for All the F-Tests", Freakonomics writes about a new book called Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist’s Companion, which they describe as: ...the rare book that captures the feeling of how to go about trying to attack an empirical question; and it does this by working through two [...]

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Perspective

May 21, 2009

From my favorite 5-book trilogy, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in [...]

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The Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything

May 16, 2009

I would be remiss if I didn't follow my last post by publishing the excellent passage that reveals that the answer to life, the universe and everything is, in fact, 42. This excerpt is from chapter 27 of Douglas Adam's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. (Deep Thought is a computer that has been figuring [...]

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42

May 16, 2009

I am absolutely ecstatic that Wolfram Alpha knows the answer to life, the universe, and everything. Indeed, it comes right back with "42" and a parenthetical citation: "(according to Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)." On reflection, it turns out Google knows the answer too, but doesn't cite its source (which I think I actually [...]

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The Nothingth

April 14, 2009

The reference in the last post was to an obscure HHG2G quote from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, as Zaphod Beeblebrox, the fugitive President of the Galaxy, tries to summon his great-grandfather's ghost: "Concentrate," hissed Zaphod, "on his name." "What is it?" asked Arthur. "Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth." "What?" "Zaphod Beeblebrox the [...]

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Some people think we do that already

February 10, 2008

On my way to play squash today, I got into a conversation with a girl on the subway. At one point she said, "Why can't we just print a ton of money and give it to everyone? Then everyone would be happy." So I laughed. Then she said, "Seriously, why not?" And I realized she [...]

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