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My Life as a Quant: Reflections on Physics and Finance (平装)
by Emanuel Derman
| Category:
Quantitative finance, Investment banking, Wall Street, Memoir |
| Market price: ¥ 168.00
MSL price:
¥ 148.00
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| Stock:
Pre-order item, lead time 3-7 weeks upon payment [ COD term does not apply to pre-order items ] |
MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
A timely and literate autobiography of an early financial engineer. |
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AllReviews |
1 Total 1 pages 7 items |
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BusinessWeek (MSL quote), USA
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That sense of being an intruder in outlaw territory lends an intriguing mood to Derman's My Life As a Quant, a literate and entertaining memoir.
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Stephen Ross, Franco Modigliani Professor of Finance and Economics, Sloan School, MIT, USA
<2008-03-15 00:00>
This wonderful autobiography takes place in that special time when scientists discovered Wall Street and Wall Street discovered them. It is elegantly written by a gifted observer who was a pioneering member of the new profession of financial engineering, with an evident affection both for finance as a science and for the scientists who practice it. Derman’s portrait of how the academics brought their new financial science to the world of business and forever changed it and, especially, his descriptions of the late and extraordinary genius Fischer Black who became his mentor, reveal a surprising humanity where it might be least expected. Who should read this book? Anyone with a serious interest in finance and everyone who simply wants to enjoy a good read. |
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Financial Times (MSL quote), UK
<2008-03-15 00:00>
There are few "gentlemen bankers" left these days. Nor is there much room in the great financial houses for anything that smacks of the amateur spirit. That is why Emanuel Derman's memoirs are so compelling… Derman's wry humour and sense of irony are apparent throughout the book. |
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Jeremy Bernstein, author of Oppenheimer: Portrait of an Enigma, USA
<2008-03-15 00:00>
Not only a delightful memoir, but one full of information, both about people and their enterprise. I never thought that I would be interested in quantitative financial analysis, but reading this book has been a fascinating education.
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Paul A. Samuelson, MIT, Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences, 1970, USA
<2008-03-15 00:00>
Derman's memoir of his transition from mathematical physicist to expert finance whiz at Goldman Sachs and Salomon Brothers reads like a novel, but tells a lot about brains applied to making money grow. |
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Nassim Taleb, author of The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness, USA
<2008-03-15 00:00>
...a deep and elegant exploration by a thinker who moved from the hardest of all sciences (physics) to the softest of the soft (finance). Derman is a different class of thinker? I know of no other book that bridges the two cultures. |
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Vincent Poirier (MSL quote), Ireland
<2008-03-15 00:00>
Quants, formerly called rocket scientists in the days when traders thought rocketry was the deepest and hardest science, are the new engineers of the financial world. I suppose the trader is the architect and thus a quant's job is to evaluate the trader's design for reliability, plausibility, and safety.
In many ways "My Life as a Quant" is a deceptively ho-hum book. Derman does whine a little and his life is somewhat ordinary, at least not that much more special than yours or mine. But this can endear him to readers as Derman is also humble and self-critical to a fault. Further, the book stands out of the crowd on two points: first, it is a timely account of the beginnings of financial engineering; second, Derman writes surprisingly graceful and elegant prose, worth reading even if you're not interested in finance.
While Derman trained and practiced as a professional physicist for many years before entering finance, he reminds his readers that financial analysis is not a precise science the way physics is. It is more of an art. Physicists, writes Derman, are reductionists, meaning they simplify the world to astonishingly successful models describing its behaviour. Quants on the other hand must never forget that all financial models are wrong and naive. The questions for them, writes Derman, are how wrong and how naive. The problems of finance are the problems of modeling human behaviour and so should not be reduced too far. In this light he his especially critical of VaR (Value-at-Risk) a single figure measure of the riskiness of a portfolio.
On personal matters, Derman shies away from invading his family's privacy. He mentions his relatives, his wife and children without describing them much. On the other hand he does discuss his personal relationship with many physicists and financial professionals; his account of his famous late colleague Fischer Black is particularly interesting. He also candidly discusses moments when he wasn't as good a person as he feels he ought to have been. These touches make him human and approachable and can offer lessons at least as important as the career advice he gives. |
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1 Total 1 pages 7 items |
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