Today’s not-so-bold prediction: US soccer doesn’t make it out of the group of death stage. It will be more fun to watch if I’m wrong, but seems unlikely.
US plays Ghana at 6pm on Monday 6/16, Portugal at 6pm on Sunday 6/22, and Germany at noon on Thursday 6/26.
Ralph Keeney wrote an article “Decision Analysis: An Overview” in the journal Operations Research in 1982. It is one of the best expositions on what the field of Decision Science/Analysis actually is.
He first introduces the field as “a formalization of common sense for decision problems which are too complex for informal use of common sense.” The problems that require formal decision analysis methodologies to arrive at a good answer are typically big and messy: many stakeholders, competing objectives, subjective valuations of alternatives, various levels of risk tolerance, and hazy projections. In these situations, four steps are needed:
1. Structure the decision problem
2. Assess possible impacts of each alternative
3. Determine preferences (values) of decision makers
4. Evaluate and compare alternatives
Toward the end of the longish (30+ page) article is this beautiful paragraph:
“Decision analysis embodies a philosophy, some concepts, and an approach to formally and systematically examine a decision problem. It is in no way a substitute for creative, innovative thinking, but rather it promotes and utilizes such efforts to provide important insights into a problem. Philosophically, decision analysis relies on the basis that the desirability of an alternative should depend on two concerns: the likelihoods that the alternative will lead to various consequences and the decision maker’s preferences for those consequences. Decision analysis addresses these concerns separately and provides the logic and techniques for integrating them.”
It is a great article for the layman or young analyst and highly recommended.
Some Thoughts on Grad School by Cal Newport. Some great thoughts about what is important and what is not while finishing your doctorate.
Vintage Business Motivational Posters. Some great stuff. To the point. Don’t make excuses.
I had a saying as an undergrad: “As time to the deadline goes to zero, my productivity goes to infinity”. This is how I lived back then. There’s a good chance that I didn’t start any homeworks or projects until the night before they were due. Not one. On more than one occasion, I was finishing papers within minutes of when they were due. But everything got done on time and I got really good grades.
So why start early? I succeeded pretty well as an 18-22 year old by starting at the last minute. Well, three main reasons.
One: It’s stressful to work against the deadline all the time.
Two: I didn’t do my best work. This didn’t matter much in undergrad courses, but does matter for most things in life.
Three: It’s hard to work and live with other human beings and procrastinate all the time. In undergrad, I largely worked and lived independently. Now, I have bigger projects with more people involved. And I live with my fiancée, Maria. And it’s not fair to all these people to be selfish with my time and start at the last minute.
I still procrastinate, but I’m light-years ahead of where I was a half-decade ago.
The trick, besides starting early, is avoiding “acceptable inefficiency” when not working against the deadline. Without a deadline to motivate myself, I find myself working less efficiently than I could be. This inefficiency seems acceptable because no noticeable problems arise. But by spending more-than-necessary time on a project, the unseen problem of less available time arises. Less time for other projects, less time for leisure. So start early, but don’t let the lack of deadlines hurt that peak efficiency you used to have when you battled deadlines.
(image from http://www.pausecutplay.com/blog/2013/4/14/dont-fucking-procrastinate-rules-of-a-creators-life.html)
If you program in Python on Windows, you know that there are a variety of versions of Python. Version 2.7 is still the standard, but the 3.x versions are probably getting better. You also need to worry about whether you are using 32-bit or 64-bit Python. Whenever you want to install a library, you need to be sure to get the library version that matches your Python version. That’s impossible half the time if you are using the standard package download site, whatever that may be. The developers of the library may or may not offer your version. If they don’t use your version and can’t be troubled with testing all the versions, then they won’t offer it.
The best work-around that I’ve found is a site by Christoph Gohlke. He offers unofficial Windows binaries for Python packages. There, you will typically find the version of the package that matches your Python version. Usually 32-bit and 64-bit options are available for recent releases of Python. Be sure to check there if you ever need a hard-to-find version of a package. It’s way easier than building it yourself.
Come to one of our Sports Open Houses.
This week:
Tuesday at 7pm: Dodgers at Reds
Full Day Saturday, with World Cup action:
noon: Colombia vs Greece
3pm: Uruguay vs Costa Rica
5pm: England vs Italy
7pm: Baseball break! Reds at Brewers
9pm: Cote d’Ivoire vs. Japan
Posts from this week:
Code Monkey Monday- Eclipse and PyDev
Life Tips- Bouncy Ball Chair
Two Links Tuesday
Theory Tuesday- Prospect Theory
An Ode to Subjective Power Rankings
Theory Thursday- Little’s Law
Project Updates- June 5, 2014
Book Review- Why I Left Goldman Sachs
Travels- Colorado Weather in Late May 2014
Maria and I went to Denver, Colorado for 8 days, May 20-28. There were 3 tornado warnings, one of which led to tornadoes. We were hailed on three times, blizzarded upon once (in the mountains), and rained upon many times.
In May 2009, some buddies and I were able to hike two 14,000 ft. mountains (Mt. Elbert and Quandry Peak) in early May with minimal snow cover. This year, however, Maria and I found all the big peaks to have snow cover from the trailhead to the summit, making most hikes pretty treacherous. We summited Mt. Bierstadt on May 22, but were unable to find any other peaks that we felt comfortable hiking. My suggestion would be to wait until June/July to climb the peaks in Colorado if you want the best chances of summiting. Also, I’m sick of hail.
Why I Left Goldman Sachs
by Greg Smith, 2012
This book, which grew out of a New York Times editorial, chronicles one man’s experience at the investment bank Goldman Sachs from around 2000 to 2012. It details Greg’s rise from lowly intern to vice president. Though, let’s not get ahead of ourselves here, Goldman Sachs gives out the title Vice President to thousands of employees. Greg felt the need to write the book to tell the world how far the values and humanity of Wall Street have fallen. No longer are investment banks looking out for their customer’s interests. Instead, they claim no responsibility for the customer’s actions, and they constantly attempt to market structured products to the customer that promise big commissions for the Wall Street firm.
I have never liked finance. I’ve never seen the appeal in working in an industry that moves money around in an effort to make the money reproduce. A lot of the financial industry seems intentionally deceptive to the interested outsider. This semester, I took a course in Asset Pricing Theory to get a grasp on the terminology in the finance field. It also fulfilled a breadth requirement that I have as a PhD student in the business school. This book and class confirmed my distrust and dislike of finance. The course alluded to the practice of creating complicated derivative investments meant to be difficult to price and track. The book confirmed this practice, and it told how Wall Street employees focus on trying to sell these “assets” to customers. The banks no longer feel the need to look out for their customers (if they ever did in the first place) and are only interested in their own bottom line.
It’s sad how much money these firms and their employees make. The allure of getting rich “out-smarting” other people on Wall Street is constantly stealing brilliant mathematicians/physicists/statisticians/etc. from useful work to work in hedge funds, investment banks, and as day-trading quants. Just last week, I was told that my friend’s husband, who is a Physics PhD, is thinking of working for a hedge fund instead of working in physics post-graduation. Finance is an arms race to have the best mathematical models. However, I don’t see a lot of spillover good from the development of these financial models to more useful fields. It’s an arms race for its own sake, and it’s a shame that so many brilliant people get caught up in it.
Bottom line: This book is a good choice if you want to learn a bit about the values of Wall Street. I also used it to get familiar with some of the financial terminology, in case it is relevant to my studies in the business school. I listened to the audio tape.
I am working from home this summer, with three projects to complete. A hospital/EMS project with Alex Mills and two sports projects. I am trying out new work styles, including writing and reading every day. Hopefully significant progress will be made this summer.