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Thursday, December 29, 2016

Math Problems


Assessing this is beyond my math chops to assess, but it is an interesting criticism of the use of math in economic by two math guys. 

Somewhat wonkish, but all verbal explanation. No math, although some familiarity with the context is required. Even without knowing the details, anyone should be able to catch the drift of these relatively short posts without being familiar with the references. 

The claim is that "mistakes were made."

Nassim Nicholas Taleb Blog
Inequality and Skin in the Game
Nassim Nicholas Taleb, scientific adviser at Universa Investments

This was posted in 2011 but it is still relevant.

Rick Bookstaber Blog
A Crack in the Foundation: An error that has wended its way through economics for 77 years
Rick Bookstaber | Research Principal in the Office of Financial Research

6 comments:

  1. Taleb blocked me because I subtweeted a post by another statistician that criticized his work. Can you imagine taking the time to go through twitter notes and blocking people, he must have thin skin for criticism that he doesn't like.

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  2. At the end of the day he is a stochastic...

    The whole 'skin in the game' thing came out because he was pissed off that tptb took determinate action and didnt let the whole system go down and create his black swan for him...

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  3. The second article discusses Ole Peters' claim about non-ergodicity, but Peters makes a mistake (really just a false equivalence) that is actually interesting to understand (well, for me):

    http://informationtransfereconomics.blogspot.com/2016/06/regulators.html

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  4. @ Jason Smith

    Thanks for the expert commentary.

    As I said, beyond my math chops to criticize. I was hoping someone would chime in.

    ReplyDelete