Simplified, a story is a problem solution description. Stories have a character that has a problem trying to solve it.
Most of our time we live in stories - novels, movies, interactive games, .... Even dreams are stories. Pointedly speaking, storytelling makes us different. But storytelling is different in the sciences and the humanities - maybe even more, storytelling has the power to close the gap between the two cultures, but scientists think, stories belong to the other territory and the humanities reject scientific method?
The tension between the two cultures is old and ongoing.
You can write stories in the language of mathematics
Think of portfolio-across-scenarios analysis. You can check the "normal" and "pathologic" cases to understand extreme situations and shift things to the borders of your working space, as well as the usual (expected) behavior. The mathematical story, like others, has a problem, a crisis, a dilemma and a solution.
Such stories work as kind of financial reality simulators. You can write them in the language of mathematical finance but burn the mathematics if you tell them to market participants?
Do the difficult things
Quants are good at many things: financial engineering, risk management, statistics, stochastic calculus, numerics, programming, … but it is really hard work to explain what they found and achieved to market participants who do not fully understand the complexity of financial concepts.
But, who else can do something so difficult that others cannot even imagine doing it?
It's a black box - white box principle
To simulate you can start with black boxes, but understanding a behavior and compose a story describing it in the theater of your mind, you need to know all the details.
We at UnRisk, are highly committed to help quants to do the hardest things. With products, leading edge technologies and uncompromising transparency.
UnRisk for Quants, UnRisk Financial Language, UnRisk Engines, UnRisk FACTORY Data Framework, UnRisk Deployment Services, …
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This post has been inspired by Jonathan Gottschall's post in Edge: The Way We Live our Lives in Stories.
