Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Simple observations

The following quotes are useful for any researcher even financial modelers.

The aims of scientific thought are to see the general in the particular and the eternal in the transitory.
-Alfred North Whitehead 

The purpose of models is not to fit the data, but to sharpen the questions.
-Samuel Karlin

There are no foolish question and no man becomes a fool until he has stopped asking questions.
-Charles Steinmetz

We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we make progress.
-Richard Feynman


Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague than an exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise.
-John Tukey


Understanding of history is critical for traders - to appreciate what will be repeated and what is unique.

History is the science of things which are never repeated.
-Paul Valery

It is always a mistake for the historian to try to predict the future. Life, unlike science, is simply too full of surprises.
-Richard Evans


Something to remember when discussing policy.

Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.
-John Kenneth Galbraith

All of what is interesting happens when it storms.


Economics is a discipline for quiet times. The profession, it turns out,... has no grip on understanding how the abnormal grows out of the normal and what happens next, its practitioners are like weather forecasters who don't understand storms.
-Will Hutton

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