Archive for February, 2010

The Quants on NPR’s Fresh Air

Ed Thorp and I were recently interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air:

Categories: Financial

The Quants Are Here

The Quants arrived in bookstores today. Now begins the process of getting the word out. Monday, Fresh Air ran an interview with Ed Thorp and me. Ed is one of the main characters in the book, the scientist who invented a mathematical method to count cards in blackjack, which he wrote about in Beat the Dealer. He later went on to found the first quant hedge fund in 1969, which was eventually called Princeton Newport Partners. He also wrote about a new method to price stock warrants in a 1967 book called Beat the Market. I spoke with Ed at length as I wrote the book and his views about the market and quantitative strategies informed the perspective I took a great deal. Ed has grown extremely disappointed with how quants have misused math and models as an excuse, a sleight of hand, to make huge bets.

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Categories: Financial
About the Author

Scott Patterson is a freelance writer covering Wall Street. He is currently working on a new book about the rise of electronic trading and artificial intelligence.

He spent six years as a staff reporter for The Wall Street Journal and has also written for the New York Times, Rolling Stone and Mother Earth News....

More about Scott Patterson »

Praise for THE QUANTS

“Scott Patterson has the ability to see things you and I don’t notice. In The Quants he does an admirable job of debunking the myths of black box traders and provides a very entertaining narrative in the process.”

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, New York Times bestselling author of FOOLED BY RANDOMNESS and THE BLACK SWAN

More praise for THE QUANTS »

Buy DARK POOLS

DARK POOLS: High-Speed Traders, A.I. Bandits and the Threat to the Global Financial System
-- By Scott Patterson, Staff Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

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