Wilmott Forums - Bourbaki and Finance

Pure Recruitment

Forum Navigation:

login

FORUMS > Book And Research Paper Forum

Topic Title: Bourbaki and Finance
Created On Mon Oct 20, 03 10:15 PM

Topic View:


	Pages: [ << 1 2 3 Previous ]

View thread in raw text format

kr
Senior Member

Posts: 1887
Joined: Sep 2002

Mon Oct 27, 03 02:29 PM

User is offline

my only experience with Griffiths/Harris goes like this:

hardcover Hong Kong photocopy edition of G/H - bought @ $7.50
traded for genuine, lightly-used edition of Milne's Etale Cohomology, 12 months later

annualized return = at least 400%

-------------------------
Fools!
I'm Nonius!!!!

elan
Senior Member

Posts: 348
Joined: Apr 2003

Mon Oct 27, 03 02:33 PM

User is offline

Quote
Originally posted by: kr
annualized return = at least 400%

You need to get out of the position first.

-------------------------
For whosoever hath, to him shall be given

kr
Senior Member

Posts: 1887
Joined: Sep 2002

Mon Oct 27, 03 02:37 PM

User is offline

no, Milne is buy+hold, pays regular educational dividends
when the asset is productively employed, of course...

honestly, you're right, cost of carry has probably been nontrivial as I've switched apartments at least 10 times since I put the trade on

-------------------------
Fools!
I'm Nonius!!!!

elan
Senior Member

Posts: 348
Joined: Apr 2003

Mon Oct 27, 03 02:39 PM

User is offline

Quote
Originally posted by: kr
no, Milne is buy+hold, pays regular educational dividends
when the asset is productively employed, of course...

honestly, you're right, cost of carry has probably been nontrivial as I've switched apartments at least 10 times since I put the trade on

Fair enough.

-------------------------
For whosoever hath, to him shall be given

zerdna
Senior Member

Posts: 1923
Joined: Jul 2002

Tue Oct 28, 03 04:21 AM

User is offline

Quote
wonderful connection between things which seem completely different

i must be smart, i always thought that this is what mathematics is, glad kr is on the same page. Arnold is a pretty straightforward fellow, i kind of felt in a similar fashion long time. Abstractization seems to me driven by a underlying desire to abstract yourself from solution of actual problems by inventing instead a new language known to a selected group. After breakup of Soviet Union, semi-literate "ethnic" scientists in provinces demanded teaching in local languages instead of Russian, which was a lingua franca then, to get rid of more qualified russian competitors. I am suspicious about similar trends with abstractization -- if its real purpose is to put to sleep people who are still alive and kicking. It seems that no amount of formal education improves people's ability to solve problems, except standard ones. In one of the threads one angry wilmotter told another that "he probably doesn't have a girlfriend or a PhD". It seemed funny to me, because the same guy put a completely off the wall answer to a naive problem that was offered to russian "below sixth grade" children. I felt pretty bad about having a PhD then and immediately remembered Ramunajan (talk about connections between different things) who didn't have a college degree and Freeman Dyson, who never had a PhD. It seems that this world needs something else, not more PhDs or Bourbakis.

-------------------------
"Doubt everything. Find your own light." -- Gautama Buddha

LongTheta
Senior Member

Posts: 1506
Joined: Aug 2003

Tue Oct 28, 03 12:12 PM

User is offline

The abstractions that Grothendieck brought on were necessary to solve the problems he was dealing with. I can also understand the appeal of abstractions and generalizations as a manifestation of the fact that you have understood your subject inside out. You cannot abstract beyond what you do not really understand.

To abstract things requires being able to see the full picture, get to the heart of the matter, extract the essentials, and generalize that. You really have to know what you are talking about. I really appreciate what people like G did, because when I try to play the same game in my own subject, I'm simply unable to, or I can do it only up to a very small fraction of what someone like G did in his own subject.

But then again, no one says that the Bourbaki way of doing things is the right way to teach mathematics. Also, though I respect G very much, I'm aware of the fact that he was surrounded by lesser mathematicians, and not all of those people were into abstractions for the same reasons.

Actually, I've been told, or read somewhere, that G was very, very good at explicit computations when he had to. He was technically very powerful.

-------------------------
Time is on my side.

zerdna
Senior Member

Posts: 1923
Joined: Jul 2002

Tue Oct 28, 03 02:05 PM

User is offline

didn't mean to say anything about Grothendieck specifically. He i thought was more into developing new mathematics rather than reshuffling old, and broke up with the B clan eventually. There are people, although i think not often, who have better algebraic intuition than any other. In case of him i am not sure -- real mathematical talent is a God's gift that allows to go through anything using any road. I'd expect Kobe Bryant to be on the top of the game even if he had to play basketball where only left hand playing and running backwards were allowed by the rules.

-------------------------
"Doubt everything. Find your own light." -- Gautama Buddha

kr
Senior Member

Posts: 1887
Joined: Sep 2002

Tue Oct 28, 03 03:10 PM

User is offline

Quote
get to the heart of the matter, extract the essentials, and generalize that

I don't mean to be argumentative, but this is just easier said than done. At least in regards to Hilbert's list of problems, the challenge there is that one isn't always sure exactly what the essentials are. For instance, Hardy and his gang used to think that an elementary proof of the prime number theorem (i.e. one without the use of complex numbers) was impossible. Then Bombieri figured out how to do it. So, Hardy misjudged what the essence of the problem really was. There are other problems that are like this - different ways to reach the same result, completely different methods, etc. Or, the solution to the problem may require a little pinch of this, a tablespoon of that - take a look at the Fermat's Last Theorem proof. There are attempts at generalization, but it was really specialization of general theories that solved the problem.

Particularly in analytic number theory, there has been a press in the last fifty years to solve some generalized versions of the specific techniques used to solve easier problems, in order to get better results. I would say the results of this form of attack have been rather poor, with researchers winding up in the doldrums of their generalizations.

Anyhow, this just shows my bias, and the approach of number theorists is not much like other branches of math. I'm also partial to Hilbert's idea of identifying the great problems as a means of focusing and directing the field. But it's been a hundred years, and we need a new list now. Maybe the whole idea is out of date... I don't know how I'd argue that one.

-------------------------
Fools!
I'm Nonius!!!!


	Pages: [ << 1 2 3 Previous ]

View thread in raw text format

FORUMS > Book And Research Paper Forum

Forum Navigation:

© All material, including contents and design, copyright Wilmott Electronic Media Limited - FuseTalk 4.01 © 1999-2010 FuseTalk Inc.