Brainy Quote of the Day

Monday, December 31, 2012

Once More...

I took a break yesterday, having an off-line life with family and friends here, here, here and here. Hence, I was too exhausted to blog.


I liked Tom Hiddleston in "Thor" and "The Avengers." Along with Henry V, these are works of fantasy. I'm sure this is how our leaders see themselves...
 
David H. Freedman wrote in Scientific American:

Financial-risk models got us in trouble before the 2008 crash, and they're almost sure to get us in trouble again

When it comes to assigning blame for the current economic doldrums, the quants who build the complicated mathematic financial risk models, and the traders who rely on them, deserve their share of the blame. [See “A Formula For Economic Calamity” in the November 2011 issue]. But what if there were a way to come up with simpler models that perfectly reflected reality? And what if we had perfect financial data to plug into them?

Incredibly, even under those utterly unrealizable conditions, we'd still get bad predictions from models.

The reason is that current methods used to “calibrate” models often render them inaccurate.

Model - Science Definition: A systematic description of an object or phenomenon that shares important characteristics with the object or phenomenon. Scientific models can be material, visual, mathematical, or computational and are often used in the construction of scientific theories. See also hypothesis, theory.


Models are a starting point, then they must bow to the unrelenting outcomes and consequences...of reality.

The educator in me challenges our congress to a simple test: the exit TAKS on social studies. Curious with your displayed acumen on governance what your scores would be.

Scientific American: Why Economic Models Are Always Wrong
Money Morning: Fiscal Cliff 2013

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