From 2 to 4 October, EuroSkills 2014 took place in Lille, France. This is thought as a championship for skilled workers.
Among 450 highly qualified skilled workers from 25 countries, the Austrian Oliver Anibas achieved the highest score. This brought him the title "Best of Europe".
Oliver Anibas is 20 years old and is an eduacted "Anlagenelektriker" (skilled worker in Industrial control), who was trained at voestalpine.
Congratulations!
Read more on EuroSkills 2014 here.
Does The Antifactory Need a Factory?
I promise that I will not ride the "anti" wave forever.
But, after I've posted Antidisciplinary on Tuesday, I read more from Joi Ito and his MIT Media Lab. Especially about his suggestion: Don't be a futurist, be a now-ist.
The credo for bottom-up innovation: don't make great plans, just do it.
Lab and factory work
Tuesday was a sunny autumn day and after all that reading I went into a little beer garden nearby, to think a little ... I drank a "Benno", a Trappist beer brewed in the Danube valley at the Engelzell Trappist monastery. The recipe has a speciality: its brewed with honey.
To make and market it, the Trappist monks cooperate with the Brewery Hofstetten that brews craft beers for worldwide markets for years. The head of the Brewery Hofstetten convinced the monks to just do it and to buy the most modern brewing equipment.
This reminded me of how to do lab and factory work simultaneously.
Antifactories
Labs are places for finding a breakthrough, new ways to solve problems and do new things. But with Joi Ito's credo its more: do it everywhere and swiftly. So antifactory is all about non-factory work?
Then Andy Warhol,s The Factory came to my mind, a meeting place of artists and musicians - in the first view. Warhol collaborated with Lou Reed's "Velvet Underground" and Bob Dylan and Mick Jagger were frequent guests.
An antifactory called "Factory"? No, Velvet's John Cale said
Factories support antifactories
To be honest, we have not seen it immediately. We developed the UnRisk FACTORY (as an automated risk management platform) and UnRisk-Q for individual quant developments. And then we combined them.
It's amazing, how things fit together.
The combination enables the swift creation of tested "originals" and the making and deployment of "prints".
But, after I've posted Antidisciplinary on Tuesday, I read more from Joi Ito and his MIT Media Lab. Especially about his suggestion: Don't be a futurist, be a now-ist.
The credo for bottom-up innovation: don't make great plans, just do it.
Lab and factory work
Tuesday was a sunny autumn day and after all that reading I went into a little beer garden nearby, to think a little ... I drank a "Benno", a Trappist beer brewed in the Danube valley at the Engelzell Trappist monastery. The recipe has a speciality: its brewed with honey.
To make and market it, the Trappist monks cooperate with the Brewery Hofstetten that brews craft beers for worldwide markets for years. The head of the Brewery Hofstetten convinced the monks to just do it and to buy the most modern brewing equipment.
This reminded me of how to do lab and factory work simultaneously.
Antifactories
Labs are places for finding a breakthrough, new ways to solve problems and do new things. But with Joi Ito's credo its more: do it everywhere and swiftly. So antifactory is all about non-factory work?
Then Andy Warhol,s The Factory came to my mind, a meeting place of artists and musicians - in the first view. Warhol collaborated with Lou Reed's "Velvet Underground" and Bob Dylan and Mick Jagger were frequent guests.
An antifactory called "Factory"? No, Velvet's John Cale said
It wasn't called The Factory for nothing. It was where the assembly line for silk screens happened. While one person was making a silk screen, somebody else would be filming a screen test. Everyday something new.And Warhol earned money with the original and prints with alternate colors. But The Factory produced more and Warhol used major parts of the income to finance the lives of Factory friends and resources.
Factories support antifactories
To be honest, we have not seen it immediately. We developed the UnRisk FACTORY (as an automated risk management platform) and UnRisk-Q for individual quant developments. And then we combined them.
It's amazing, how things fit together.
The combination enables the swift creation of tested "originals" and the making and deployment of "prints".
Good at Math
is the title of Seth Godin's blog post yesterday. A short contribution. A view on math education through the lens of a marketer, author of 17 best selling books translated into more than 35 languages, a writer about the post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread marketing, …..
It's because you haven't had a math teacher who cared enough to teach you math. They've probably been teaching you to memorize formulas and to be good at math tests instead.
… we need to get focused and demanding and relentless in getting good at math, at getting our kids good at math ...It's nothing I could add. Oh wait, only one thing: "getting our kids good at math and programming". Early. Kids are thinking antidisciplinary … they want answers and they are good in organizing to get them. Let them explore and construct things (computationally).
Running, running, running
On Sept. 25, the Linz city night run (organized by Allgemeine Sparkasse) took place. UnRisk was represented by Diana Hufnagl and Sascha Kratky, and I think they enjoyed their race.
By curiosity, I did some gathering of information on the 1896 olympic marathon race.
Did you know that the 1896 marathon was (with 40 km) slightly shorter than marathon races are today?
The winner Spyridon Louis (GRE) finished with a time of 2:58:50. Spyridon Belokas finshed third. However, he was later disqualified because there was a protest that Belokas had covered part of the course by carriage.
It seems that the 1896 olympics were less organized and less commercialized than olympics are today.
By curiosity, I did some gathering of information on the 1896 olympic marathon race.
Did you know that the 1896 marathon was (with 40 km) slightly shorter than marathon races are today?
The winner Spyridon Louis (GRE) finished with a time of 2:58:50. Spyridon Belokas finshed third. However, he was later disqualified because there was a protest that Belokas had covered part of the course by carriage.
It seems that the 1896 olympics were less organized and less commercialized than olympics are today.
Antidisciplinary
The Antifragile becomes stronger with added stress. The word defies easy definition and I think NN Taleb introduced it, because the non-fragility is not equal to resilience or robustness. This May I asked Does Antifragility Need Fragility?
Antidisciplinary is all about non-elephant animals
The MIT Media Lab uses "antidisciplinary" as position for doing research and learning. I enjoyed reading about it in Joi Ito's Blog: Antidisciplinary. It is another word that defies easy definition. It is not the same as interdisciplinary. IMO, it is a specialization on the non-specialization. Joi Ito says, it is all about non-elephant animals.
It's against fragmentation of disciplines in thinking, speaking, doing, … Thinking mathematically without restricting to special functions, operators, …? In combination with computer science it is maybe about knowledge based languages to program everything? Make "everything" computational.
Behavioral theories of finance or quant finance?
Behavior theories of economics haven been accepted in financial circles. But more than as the feedback of psychoanalysts - at "financial markets cocktail parties"? Quants may think they are all treated in features, like mean reverting … and behavioral economists may not think about turning them into something quantifiable?
Modeling Volatility and Valuing Derivatives under Anchoring
In the September, 2014 issue of the Wilmott magazine, Wilmott, Lewis and Duffy make a rare connection between anchoring (a big idea in behavioral theories) and practical quant finance. They introduced a complete-markets model with volatility smiles, tractability, and intuitive appeal as an anchoring or habit-formation model. A derivatives valuation model that has a memory.
Joi Ito may say: instead of impressing a small number of experts, taking the high risk of an unconventional approach.
Does antidisciplinary need disciplines?
Paul Wilmott's approach required different thinking but also heavy mathematics (numerics) not limited to the calibration challenges.
The antidisciplinary space needs disciplines and a rich technology stack, but also openness to ideas between disciplines.
Quants with future know this.
Antidisciplinary is all about non-elephant animals
The MIT Media Lab uses "antidisciplinary" as position for doing research and learning. I enjoyed reading about it in Joi Ito's Blog: Antidisciplinary. It is another word that defies easy definition. It is not the same as interdisciplinary. IMO, it is a specialization on the non-specialization. Joi Ito says, it is all about non-elephant animals.
It's against fragmentation of disciplines in thinking, speaking, doing, … Thinking mathematically without restricting to special functions, operators, …? In combination with computer science it is maybe about knowledge based languages to program everything? Make "everything" computational.
Behavioral theories of finance or quant finance?
Behavior theories of economics haven been accepted in financial circles. But more than as the feedback of psychoanalysts - at "financial markets cocktail parties"? Quants may think they are all treated in features, like mean reverting … and behavioral economists may not think about turning them into something quantifiable?
Modeling Volatility and Valuing Derivatives under Anchoring
In the September, 2014 issue of the Wilmott magazine, Wilmott, Lewis and Duffy make a rare connection between anchoring (a big idea in behavioral theories) and practical quant finance. They introduced a complete-markets model with volatility smiles, tractability, and intuitive appeal as an anchoring or habit-formation model. A derivatives valuation model that has a memory.
Joi Ito may say: instead of impressing a small number of experts, taking the high risk of an unconventional approach.
Does antidisciplinary need disciplines?
Paul Wilmott's approach required different thinking but also heavy mathematics (numerics) not limited to the calibration challenges.
The antidisciplinary space needs disciplines and a rich technology stack, but also openness to ideas between disciplines.
Quants with future know this.
Linking the UnRisk FACTORY to UnRisk-Q Chapter 2
In last week's blog Linking the UnRisk FACTORY to UnRisk-Q Chapter 1 I demonstrated how the UnRisk Web Service may be used to price a financial Instrument, which has been set up in the UnRisk FACTORY, under an interest rate curve, which has been set up in Mathematica - the valuation has been performed by the use of UnRisk-Q
Today I will describe the same procedure but the other way round, I will
- Set up a bond in Mathematica (by the use of UnRisk-Q)
- Load an interest rate curve, which has been set up and bootstrapped automatically within the UnRisk FACTORY, into Mathematica
- Price the bond under this interest rate curve within Mathematica (again, by the use of UnRisk-Q)
Here is a screenshot of the UnRisk FACTORY interest rate curve:
The necessary steps are explained in the following code of Mathematica
Conclusion: Within the UnRisk FACTORY the user can set up interest rate curves / interest rate models / all kinds of market data (being imported, bootstrapped, calibrated, etc.., automatically every night). The UnRisk Web Service enables the user to import these market data into the world of Mathematica. By the use of UnRisk-Q the user can perform valuations or analyze the behaviour of prices of instruments which the user can set up within Mathematica in a very flexible way.
Unlambda - Your Functional Programming Nightmares Come True
The Lambda calculus is a formal system for expressing computation based on function abstraction. Functional programming languages are counterpart to lambda calculus in computer science. But also other languages have been extended with lambda abstraction.
Unlambda is an (obfuscated) functional programming language designed to make programming painful and difficult. Unlambda likes unfeatures (no variables, data structures, code constructs, ..). Everything is a unary function. As algebraist I cherry-picked the concept of Idempotence.
Example from the Unlambda home page: the following Unlambda program calculates and prints the Fibonacci numbers (as lines of asterisks)
```s``s``sii`ki `k.*``s``s`ks ``s`k`s`ks``s``s`ks``s`k`s`kr``s`k`sikk `k``s`kskWriting Unlambda programs may not be too hard, but reading them is practically impossible.
Meet And Talk To Yourself 20 Years Into The Future
Begin 2010, I posted Me Talking To Myself in the Future looking playfully into the past of UnRisk from the perspective of 2012.
When things develop fast 2 years may be long and some of my short term predictions were simply wrong. We rejected automated model and method selection favoring transparency and optionality instead.
Today, I found this article in "FastCompany": Now You Can Meet and Talk To Yourself 20 Years Into The Future. 20 years, really? 5 years ago, the iPad was not introduced, I thought. But watching the video I understood … it's about our-future-self simulation with advanced technologies. Bravo!
When things develop fast 2 years may be long and some of my short term predictions were simply wrong. We rejected automated model and method selection favoring transparency and optionality instead.
Today, I found this article in "FastCompany": Now You Can Meet and Talk To Yourself 20 Years Into The Future. 20 years, really? 5 years ago, the iPad was not introduced, I thought. But watching the video I understood … it's about our-future-self simulation with advanced technologies. Bravo!
More Small Real Options - Outsmart Eager Sellers To Get Best Prices
Remember, wait-a-little can be an option.
Some (online ) sellers use algorithms to predict what they shall offer you next. There are some ways in which we can beat the system (using options after predicting how such predictors work). In principle, use a website to track prices, the smart buyer can play day-trader with such data and wait for a favorable time to buy. It's unbelievable how volatile prices can be.
This are more specific tricks:
Another real option from the blogosphere: innovators use trial installations of special online shop technologies to test markets and promotion
Some (online ) sellers use algorithms to predict what they shall offer you next. There are some ways in which we can beat the system (using options after predicting how such predictors work). In principle, use a website to track prices, the smart buyer can play day-trader with such data and wait for a favorable time to buy. It's unbelievable how volatile prices can be.
This are more specific tricks:
- Say, you buy special wines and you think the retailer who had the best price last year will have it again this year. But some online retailers with dynamic pricing have better offers to new customers than to repeat buyers. So, let the system think you are a new customer (block cookies and website data in your browser, or better use a cookie-disabled browser ...
- When making an online purchase, put your wanted wines into the virtual shopping cart and click "checkout". Provide your name and e-mail address, move on to purchase info, but dot enter your credit card details. You may get an e-mail with a special offer
There is much more in William Poundstone's book: Rock Breaks Scissors: A Practical Guide to Outguessing and Outwitting Almost Everybody.
People are predictable even when they try not to be. William Poundstone demonstrates how to turn this fact to personal advantage in scores of everyday situations, from playing the lottery to buying a home.BTW, I have especially enjoyed Poundstone's book: Labyrinths of Reason: Paradoxes, Puzzles, and the Frailty to Knowledge
Another real option from the blogosphere: innovators use trial installations of special online shop technologies to test markets and promotion
Real Options on the Small Scale
Yesterday, in To tree is the answer, Herbert praised the elegance of trees when analyzing real options. Has this topic "real options" any relevance to your individual life?
I claim "yes, it has", and it has almost daily.
A real option always comes into play, when a party (here: you) has the choice to invest or not, or to invest to a certain extent. Do you have the choice?
Think of mobile phones. In the good old stone-age of telecommunication in Austria (up to the mid 1990's), there was an absolute monopoly in the telecommunication market. Service quality was poor, and prices were high. With the destruction of the monopoly, Austria became one of the most competitive markets (concerning mobile communication) in the whole world. Customers were offered free mobile phones with their contracts (running for 2 or 3 years), and the prices per minute in a national call dropped from around 50 cent to close to nothing.
When you are up to enter a new mobile phone plan, you have to decide:
- Do I want a flat rate with many free call minutes, text messages, data volume at a higher level or do I want to have a low basis fee and higher per-minute costs?
A classical real option.
To decide it, you should know your telecommunication habits (difficult enough, because you have to make a forecast for the next two years). I am also convinced that (following Kahneman's loss aversion principle) most persons do not feel comfortable when exceeding their call minutes quota and therefore tend to have too large volumes on their contracts.
Anyway. The costs of mobile communication are peanuts nowadays.
Is this (negligible costs) also true for individual traffic? When you live close to public transport, do you need two (ore more) cars per household? Is car-renting or car-sharing a real option alternative?
I claim "yes, it has", and it has almost daily.
A real option always comes into play, when a party (here: you) has the choice to invest or not, or to invest to a certain extent. Do you have the choice?
Think of mobile phones. In the good old stone-age of telecommunication in Austria (up to the mid 1990's), there was an absolute monopoly in the telecommunication market. Service quality was poor, and prices were high. With the destruction of the monopoly, Austria became one of the most competitive markets (concerning mobile communication) in the whole world. Customers were offered free mobile phones with their contracts (running for 2 or 3 years), and the prices per minute in a national call dropped from around 50 cent to close to nothing.
When you are up to enter a new mobile phone plan, you have to decide:
- Do I want a flat rate with many free call minutes, text messages, data volume at a higher level or do I want to have a low basis fee and higher per-minute costs?
A classical real option.
To decide it, you should know your telecommunication habits (difficult enough, because you have to make a forecast for the next two years). I am also convinced that (following Kahneman's loss aversion principle) most persons do not feel comfortable when exceeding their call minutes quota and therefore tend to have too large volumes on their contracts.
Anyway. The costs of mobile communication are peanuts nowadays.
Is this (negligible costs) also true for individual traffic? When you live close to public transport, do you need two (ore more) cars per household? Is car-renting or car-sharing a real option alternative?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)