The Physics of Wall Street: A Brief History of Predicting the Unpredictable
by Weatherall, James Owen
- Used
- Hardcover
- first
- Condition
- Like New/Like New
- ISBN 10
- 0547317271
- ISBN 13
- 9780547317274
- Seller
-
Southampton, New York, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Synopsis
After the economic meltdown of 2008, Warren Buffett famously warned, “beware of geeks bearing formulas.” But as James Weatherall demonstrates, not all geeks are created equal. While many of the mathematicians and software engineers on Wall Street failed when their abstractions turned ugly in practice, a special breed of physicists has a much deeper history of revolutionizing finance. Taking us from fin-de-siècle Paris to Rat Pack-era Las Vegas, from wartime government labs to Yippie communes on the Pacific coast, Weatherall shows how physicists successfully brought their science to bear on some of the thorniest problems in economics, from options pricing to bubbles. The crisis was partly a failure of mathematical modeling. But even more, it was a failure of some very sophisticated financial institutions to think like physicists. Models—whether in science or finance—have limitations; they break down under certain conditions. And in 2008, sophisticated models fell into the hands of people who didn’t understand their purpose, and didn’t care. It was a catastrophic misuse of science. The solution, however, is not to give up on models; it's to make them better. Weatherall reveals the people and ideas on the cusp of a new era in finance. We see a geophysicist use a model designed for earthquakes to predict a massive stock market crash. We discover a physicist-run hedge fund that earned 2,478.6% over the course of the 1990s. And we see how an obscure idea from quantum theory might soon be used to create a far more accurate Consumer Price Index. Both persuasive and accessible, The Physics of Wall Street is riveting history that will change how we think about our economic future.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Southampton Books (US)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 118795
- Title
- The Physics of Wall Street: A Brief History of Predicting the Unpredictable
- Author
- Weatherall, James Owen
- Format/Binding
- Hardcover
- Book Condition
- New
- Jacket Condition
- Like New
- Quantity Available
- 1
- Edition
- First Edition
- ISBN 10
- 0547317271
- ISBN 13
- 9780547317274
- Publisher
- Mariner Books
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- 2013
- Keywords
- , , , , , , , ,
Terms of Sale
Southampton Books
About the Seller
Southampton Books
About Southampton Books
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- Tight
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- Octavo
- Another of the terms referring to page or book size, octavo refers to a standard printer's sheet folded four times, producing...
- First Edition
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- Spine
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