Results for “Ed Lopez” 67 found
*Madmen, Intellectuals, and Academic Scribblers*
That is a new and forthcoming book from Wayne A. Leighton and Edward L. Lopez, and the subtitle is The Economic Engine of Political Change. Here is my blurb:
Ideas matter. Madmen, with its engaging stories, is perfect for anyone interested in public policy, or how our world could be a better place. Read it, and assign it to your class.
The spread of priority queueing
Here is one example of many:
Take the Six Flags White Water amusement park in Atlanta, which implemented a priority queue system in 2011.
Some guests simply queue up for their rides. Those who purchase green-and-gold wrist bands – fitted with radio frequency technology – are able to swim in the pool or eat snacks before being alerted to their turn.
Guests who pay an even higher fee – roughly double the price of admission – get the gold flash pass, cutting their waiting time in half.
The company says it has been a huge hit and is now installing the system in all of its American water parks.
Furthermore:
The priority queuing system has also started to be extended to the public sphere. Many people who drive to Six Flags White Water take Interstate highway I-85.
In October 2011, Atlanta created a priority lane on the highway for drivers with a Peach Pass – the price of driving in the lane changes depending on how much traffic there is.
For the pointer I thank Ray Lopez.
The Volume Clock
That is the title of a new paper by David Easley, Marcos M. Lopez de Prado, and Maureen O’Hara:
Abstract:
Over the last two centuries, technological advantages have allowed some traders to be faster than others. We argue that, contrary to popular perception, speed is not the defining characteristic that sets High Frequency Trading (HFT) apart. HFT is the natural evolution of a new trading paradigm that is characterized by strategic decisions made in a volume-clock metric. Even if the speed advantage disappears, HFT will evolve to continue exploiting Low Frequency Trading’s (LFT) structural weaknesses. However, LFT practitioners are not defenseless against HFT players, and we offer options that can help them survive and adapt to this new environment.
The paper has many interesting bits, such as this:
Databases with trillions of observations are now commonplace in financial firms. Machine learning methods, such as Nearest Neighbor or Multivariate Embedding algorithms search for patterns within a library of recorded events. This ability to process and learn from what is known as “big data” only reinforces the advantages of HFT’s “event-time” paradigm, very much like how “Deep Blue” could assign probabilities to Kasparov’s next 20 moves, based on hundreds of thousands of past games (or more recently, why Watson could outplay his Jeopardy opponents).
The upshot is that speed makes HFTs more effective, but slowing them down won’t change their basic behavior: Strategic sequential trading in event time.
One message of the paper is that sequential strategic behavior will occur at any speed. I liked this sentence:
As we have seen, HFT algos can easily detect when there is a human in the trading room, and take advantage.
And the ending bit is this:
There is a natural balance between HFTs and LFTs. Just as in nature the number of predators is limited by the available prey, the number of HFTs is constrained by the available LFT flows. Rather than seeking “endangered species” status for LFTs (by virtue of legislative action like a Tobin tax or speed limit), it seems more efficient and less intrusive to starve some HFTs by making LFTs smarter. Carrier pigeons or dedicated fiber optic cable notwithstanding, the market still operates to provide liquidity and price discovery – only now it does it very quickly and strategically.
My favorite things Puerto Rican
The list came out quite well:
1. Actress: Jennifer Lopez. Seriously. Out of Sight is quite good and the badly misunderstood The Cell makes perfect sense once you realize it is a retelling of parts of Sikh theology. Rita Moreno gets honorable mention.
2. Cellist: Pablo Casals (his mother was Puerto Rican and he ended up living there). His Bach Suites, while profound, are largely unlistenable due to the scratching and scraping. Nonetheless there are still revelations to be found in the trio recordings, Schubert, bits of the Beethoven, etc.
3. Artist: Jean-Michel Basquiat. Sneer if you wish, but his 1982-1984 period is very good, most of all the sketches. There are many bad Basquiat works, however, and lots of fakes.
4. Economic historian and colleague: Carlos Ramirez. Don't forget his paper on the bailout.
5. Poet: Juan Ramón Jiménez, who left Spain for Puerto Rico. Here is his Platero y Yo. Although he won a Nobel Prize in 1956, this very pure poet remains underrated in the United States.
6. Reggaeton song: Gasolina, by Daddy Yankee; note that reggaeton originated in Panama.
7. Guitarist: Jose Feliciano. Here is his Star-Spangled Banner (excerpt) and here. Here is Jose and Johnny Cash.
8. Musical, about: Paul Simon's The Caveman (not WSS, which I actively dislike).
9. Art museum: The two notable collections of pre-Raphelite art in this hemisphere are in Wilmington, Delaware and Ponce, Puerto Rico. Each is worth a visit.
10. Building: Puerto Rico has many fine homes and a surprising amount of Art Deco, plus the colonial buildings and fortifications in San Juan. Here is the over the top fire station in Ponce. But overall I'll pick the metalwork on one of the country homes, somewhere between San Juan and Ponce.
The bottom line: The achievements are strong and varied, noting that I've used a looser notion of affiliation than in some comparisons past.
Making Knightian uncertainty operational
Tell us how "Knightian uncertainty can be made operational"…
Knightian uncertainty is not usually important when you are playing the first twenty (or is it these days thirty?) moves of a Ruy Lopez in grandmaster chess. When Knightian uncertainty matters, we should observe market participants investing more in opportunities for serendipitous discovery. This might, for instance, mean buying new books on a lark, traveling randomly around the world in search of insight, and in general mimicking wunderkind Ben Casnocha.
Do you think Knightian uncertainty is important in labor markets? If so, go out and hire some people on the basis of rumors.
Norton A. Myers’s new and excellent Happy Accidents: Serendipity in Modern Medical Breakthroughs: When Scientists Find What They’re NOT Looking For is one of the best books I know of on science.
#18 in a series of 50.
Mac to PC Prize
Apple’s switch to Intel based machines makes it possible to actually run Windows (rather than emulate Windows) on a Mac. Who made this possible? Was it Apple? Microsoft? Intel? No, it was Jesus, Jesus Lopez. David Pogue writes about the patch and the innovative prize that motivated the programming.
Colin Nederkoorn created "a contest Web site, OnMac.net.
The challenge: to figure out how to install Windows on an Intel-based
Mac. The prize: a pot donated by interested parties all over the
Internet, seeded by $100 from Mr. Nederkoorn.The doubters:
plentiful. "You do realize that it’s not technologically possible
without rewriting the bootloader?" wrote one respondent. "Take your 100
bucks and save it."The winner: Jesus Lopez, a San Francisco-area programmer who collected a pot that had grown to $13,854.
…It runs most Windows software beautifully, but the rough edges are a
reminder that these are the earliest days in the Age of FrankenMac….
Thanks to Daniel Akst for the pointer.
Addendum: Chris Rasch points out that Apple is now also getting on the bandwagon. (I like this warning, "Windows running on a Mac is like Windows running on a PC. That means
it’ll be subject to the same attacks that plague the Windows world….")
Markets in everything: marital odds
The betting odds that Jennifer Lopez will divorce Marc Anthony before the end of the year: 3 to 1
The odds that Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher will marry before the end of the year: 1 to 2
The odds that Justin Timberlake and Cameron Diaz will marry before the end of the year: 5 to 1
Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles? 8 to 1
The odds that David and Victoria Beckham will divorce have gone from 50 to 1 to 2 to 1 to 8 to 1 within the year.
Here is the full story (NYT, registration required). Here is one market site.
Addended Query: Would it help your marriage to have the odds publicly posted?