Prices in the junk bond market
There are various ways of deciding how valuable something is. People spend some amount of time talking about “the current value of future earnings til the end of time” as a rule-of-thumb measurement. That sometimes works (i.e. jives with what the selling price is), but it’s certainly not robust – in a given case, plenty of people think there’s a good reason a stock should be worth more than that, if their personal growth projections are rosy (you could argue that they are still valuing future earnings, but they’ve got a different projection than, say, the current dividends continued as is. Another possibility is that they’re simply valuing future values coming from other people). Similarly, some stocks are underpriced with respect to this baseline. Could it be that they’re cooking their books? If they don’t last til the end of time then they could hardly be making earnings til then (Groupon).
Of course when you go down that road, nothing lasts til the end of time. Never mind companies, the industry in which the company sits will be dead before too long unless it’s food or cosmetics.
Anyway, throw out the future earnings price for a moment, and replace it by something else entirely: there’s a certain amount of money invested in the (international) market at a given moment, and it has to go somewhere. I think of it as a big pot that sloshes around and achieves equilibrium depending on various things like relative interest rates in different countries, and to a lesser extent, regulation in different countries and access to markets. Like, the carry trade is kind of a big deal, and depends almost entirely on the Japanese interest rate being tiny.
Of course it’s not really that simple, since people can and do remove money from the market at certain times – it’s not a closed system. But not as much money is removed as you might think, because if you think about it, lots of people have set up their livelihoods to be investing large pots of money, so they need to appear busy.
Articles like this one from Bloomberg make me think about the “where should we put our money that we need to invest somewhere?” effect is particularly strong right now. We see people “chasing yield” in the junk bond market, buying junk bonds that have positive yields because their options are limited while the Fed keeps the rates really low (this is not a side-effect of the Fed’s keeping the rates low, it’s their goal. They want people to invest in financing businesses, which is what buying junk bonds is).
But they (the investors) all want the same stuff, so the prices are too low high, which is another way of saying the yields are a lot lower than they’d otherwise be if there were other things to buy. This might be a good example of where the price of junk debt is not particularly good at exposing the actual risk of default. Well, it might be an ok indicator of the very short-term default rate, but that’s just because money is so cheap right now, businesses in trouble can just borrow more. It’s kind of a set-up for a bubble.
The article makes the point that once the Fed raises rates, people will flee this market, since they will actually be able to make money again with less risky bonds. The slower actors will be left with much-reduced-in-value junk debt. The big pot of money which is the market will have an entirely new equilibrium point, and there will be lots of death and destruction in the transition. It’s become even more crucial than usual to time the Fed’s moves, but keep in mind money managers are going to stay in there as long as they possibly can because they don’t want to miss yield while their bonuses depend on it (“opportunity costs”). It’s a game of chicken.
Staying with the meta-analysis, can someone do a back-of-the-envelope estimate of how much built-in interest rate risk we’ve taken on by the issuance of so much junk debt in the overall international portfolio? Is it sizeable?
Is mathematics a vehicle for control fraud?
Bill Black
A couple of nights I ago I attended this event at Columbia on the topic of “Rent-Seeking, Instability and Fraud: Challenges for Financial Reform”.
The event was great, albeit depressing – I particularly loved Bill Black‘s concept of control fraud, which I’ll talk more about in a moment, as well as Lynn Turner‘s polite description of the devastation caused by the financial crisis.
To be honest, our conclusion wasn’t a surprise: there is a lack of political will in Congress or elsewhere to fix the problems, even the low-hanging obvious criminal frauds. There aren’t enough actual police to take on the job of dealing with the number of criminals that currently hide in the system (I believe the statistic was that there are about 1,000,000 people in law enforcement in this country, and 2,500 are devoted to white-collar crime), and the people at the top of the regulatory agencies have been carefully chosen to not actually do anything (or let their underlings do anything).
Even so, it was interesting to hear about this stuff through the eyes of a criminologist who has been around the block (Black was the guy who put away a bunch of fraudulent bankers after the S&L crisis) and knows a thing or two about prosecuting crimes. He talked about the concept of control fraud, and how pervasive control fraud is in the current financial system.
Control Fraud
Control fraud, as I understood him to describe it, is the process by which a seemingly legitimate institution or process is corrupted by a fraudulent institution to maintain the patina of legitimacy.
Once you say it that way, you recognize it everywhere, and you realize how dirty it is, since outsiders to the system can’t tell what’s going on – hey, didn’t you have overseers? Didn’t they say everything was checking out ok? What the hell happened?
So for example, financial firms like Bank of America used control fraud in the heart of the housing bubble via their ridiculous accounting methods. As one of the speakers mentioned, the accounting firm in charge of vetting BofA’s books issued the same exact accounting description for many years in the row (literally copy and paste) even as BofA was accumulating massive quantities of risky mortgage-backed securities (update: I’ve been told it’s called an “Auditors Report” and it has required language. But surely not all the words are required? Otherwise how could it be called a report?). In other words, the accounting firm had been corrupted in order to aid and abet the fraud.
“Financial Innovation”
To get an idea of the repetitive nature and near-inevitability of control fraud, read this essay by Black, which is very much along the lines of his presentation on Tuesday. My favorite passage is this, when he addresses how our regulatory system “forgot about” control fraud during the deregulation boom of the 1990’s:
On January 17, 1996, OTS’ Notice of Proposed Rulemaking proposed to eliminate its rule requiring effective underwriting on the grounds that such rules were peripheral to bank safety.
“The OTS believes that regulations should be reserved for core safety and soundness requirements. Details on prudent operating practices should be relegated to guidance.
Otherwise, regulated entities can find themselves unable to respond to market innovations because they are trapped in a rigid regulatory framework developed in accordance with conditions prevailing at an earlier time.”
This passage is delusional. Underwriting is the core function of a mortgage lender. Not underwriting mortgage loans is not an “innovation” – it is a “marker” of accounting control fraud. The OTS press release dismissed the agency’s most important and useful rule as an archaic relic of a failed philosophy.
Here’s where I bring mathematics into the mix. My experience in finance, first as a quant at D.E. Shaw, and then as a quantitative risk modeler at Riskmetrics, convinced me that mathematics itself is a vehicle for control fraud, albeit in two totally different ways.
Complexity
In the context of hedge funds and/or hard-core trading algorithms, here’s how it works. New-fangled complex derivatives, starting with credit default swaps and moving on to CDO’s, MBS’s, and CDO+’s, got fronted as “innovation” by a bunch of economists who didn’t really know how markets work but worked at fancy places and claimed to have mathematical models which proved their point. They pushed for deregulation based on the theory that the derivatives represented “a better way to spread risk.”
Then the Ph.D.’s who were clever enough to understand how to actually price these instruments swooped in and made asstons of money. Those are the hedge funds, which I see as kind of amoral scavengers on the financial system.
At the same time, wanting a piece of the action, academics invented associated useless but impressive mathematical theories which culminated in mathematics classes throughout the country that teach “theory of finance”. These classes, which seemed scientific, and the associated economists described above, formed the “legitimacy” of this particular control fraud: it’s math, you wouldn’t understand it. But don’t you trust math? You do? Then allow us to move on with rocking our particular corner of the financial world, thanks.
Risk
I also worked in quantitative risk, which as I see it is a major conduit of mathematical control fraud.
First, we have people putting forward “risk estimates” that have larger errorbars then the underlying values. In other words, if we were honest about how much we can actually anticipate price changes in mortgage backed securities in times of panic, then we’d say something like, “search me! I got nothing.” However, as we know, it’s hard to say “I don’t know” and it’s even harder to accept that answer when there’s money on the line. And I don’t apologize for caring about “times of panic” because, after all, that’s why we care about risk in the first place. It’s easy to predict risk in quiet times, I don’t give anyone credit for that.
Never mind errorbars, though- the truth is, I saw worse than ignorance in my time in risk. What I actually saw was a rubberstamping of “third part risk assessment” reports. I saw the risk industry for what it is, namely a poor beggar at the feet of their macho big-boys-of-finance clients. It wasn’t just my firm either. I’ve recently heard of clients bullying their third party risk companies into allowing them to replace whatever their risk numbers were by their own. And that’s even assuming that they care what the risk reports say.
Conclusion
Overall, I’m thinking this time is a bit different, but only in the details, not in the process. We’ve had control fraud for a long long time, but now we have an added tool in the arsenal in the form of mathematics (and complexity). And I realize it’s not a standard example, because I’m claiming that the institution that perpetuated this particular control fraud wasn’t a specific institution like Bank of America, but rather then entire financial system. So far it’s just an idea I’m playing with, what do you think?
How much are the taxpayers subsidizing too-big-to-fail banks, if not $83 billion per year?
There’s been lots of controversy over the Bloomberg editorial I wrote about a few days ago. The article, which is here, used an IMF study to do a back-of-the-envelope calculation on how much the yearly taxpayer subsidy is for the too-big-to-fail banks.
Since then, there have been lots of people coming out of the woodwork complaining about their interpretation of the paper, about their assumptions, and about the result. I also had someone doing that on my comments, which I appreciate.
Then, more recently, Bloomberg doubled down on their original number, which is exciting stuff in the world of wonky modeling.
Here’s where I am:
- This question is important- possibly the most important question about the current financial system, as it relates to the average taxpayer. Wouldn’t you want to know how much something you’ve bought costs?
- And I’m absolutely smitten by the Bloomberg editorial staff for raising the question and coming out with a model and an answer.
- That doesn’t mean it’s perfect. They were relatively sloppy (but not as sloppy as some people claim).
- I’m no expert either, but I’m absolutely intrigued by this question and the possible answers.
- But since I’m a modeler, I know it’s a lot easier to push over a model by complaining about an assumption than it is to come up with a better model that doesn’t make such stupid assumptions.
- So anyone who complains should also offer an alternative.
- Because we need to know the answer to this, and since there’s not one answer, we need to have this argument, publicly.
- And after all what’s the point of modeling if we can’t answer this?
One more thing. Matt Levine at Dealbreaker has come up with his own model, here, but I’m not sure it’s more convincing than Bloomberg’s. In particular his conclusion is that TBTF banks actually subsidize us (not really).
So what is it? Where’s your model?
We need this public discussion and we need thoughtful arguments about the existing models. Let’s do this!
Ninja Warrior – Sasuke
If you having trouble falling asleep some time, but you’re too tired to actually read things that require anything more than amusement, amazement, and bafflement, then let me suggest you watch a bit of Sasuke, also known as the Japanese version of American Ninja Warrior (hat tip Johan de Jong).
I dare you to watch only five minutes of the following final round (here’s the competition from the beginning if you are hardcore) in which the last surviving American gets expelled almost immediately and it’s down to the last few Japanese competitors. It’s extra fun for it to be in Japanese because then you get to add in dubbing, kind of like Iron Chef used to be back before it became Americanized:
The overburdened prior
At my new job I’ve been spending my time editing my book with Rachel Schutt (who is joining me at JRL next week! Woohoo!). It’s called Doing Data Science and it’s based on these notes I took when she taught a class on data science at Columbia last semester. Right now I’m working on the alternating least squares chapter, where we learned from Matt Gattis how to build and optimize a recommendation system. A very cool algorithm.
However, to be honest I’ve started to feel very sorry for the one parameter we call 
Let me tell you, the world is asking too much from this little guy, and moreover most of the big-data world is too indifferent to its plight. Let me explain.
First, he’s supposed to reflect an actual prior belief – namely, his size is supposed to reflect a mathematical vision of how big we think the coefficients in our solution should be.
In an ideal world, we would think deeply about this question of size before looking at our training data, and think only about the scale of our data (i.e. the input), the scale of the preferences (i.e. the recommendation system output) and the quality and amount of training data we have, and using all of that, we’d figure out our prior belief on the size or at least the scale of our hoped-for solution.
I’m not statistician, but that’s how I imagine I’d spend my days if I were: thinking through this reasoning carefully, and even writing it down carefully, before I ever start my training. It’s a discipline like any other to carefully state your beliefs beforehand so you know you’re not just saying what the data wants to hear.
But then there’s the next thing we ask of our parameter 
Because our algorithm isn’t a closed form solution, but rather we are discovering coefficients of two separate matrices 
The fact that this algorithm will in fact stop is not obvious, and in fact it isn’t always true.
It is (mostly*) true, however, if our little
And people say that all the time. When you say, “hey what if that algorithm doesn’t converge?” They say, “oh if
But that’s kind of like worrying about your teenage daughter getting pregnant so you lock her up in her room all the time. You’ve solved the immediate problem by sacrificing an even bigger goal.
Because let’s face it, if the prior
By the way, there’s a discipline here too, and I’d suggest that if the algorithm doesn’t converge you might also want to consider reducing your number of latent variables rather than increasing your
Finally, we have one more job for our little
In other words, in reality most of the above nonsense about
This is one example among many where having the ability to push a button that makes something hard seem really easy might be doing more harm than good. In this case the button says “optimize with respect to
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: you do need to know about inverting a matrix, and other math too, if you want to be a good data scientist.
* There’s a change-of-basis ambiguity that’s tough to get rid of here, since you only choose the number of latent variables, not their order. This doesn’t change the overall penalty term, so you can minimize that with large enough
Aunt Pythia’s advice
I’m psyched to be back here at my weekly inane advice column. Glad you’re here too.
This week I had the hugest compliment payed to my alter ego Aunt Pythia, namely that in a domestic dispute her name was floated as the person who could solve the dilemma at hand. There was even a threat of writing to Aunt Pythia, mid-argument!
Now that’s what I call real-world impact, which as you know is how I measure all things.
By the way, if you don’t know what you’re in for, go here for past advice columns and here for an explanation of the name Pythia. Most importantly,
Please submit your question at the bottom of this column!
——
Dear Aunt Pythia,
What do you wish you had known when you were 21 years old? If you could go back and yell, “That’s not important, don’t think about that! Look over here!” what would you explain? I’ve got only one run through the early 20s and I need your help.
Gloomily orating, an undergrad not totaling plenty years turning humbug into acronym
Dear Goauntpythia,
This will sound trite, but here goes.
There’s one thing I figured out when I was about 23 or so that has served me incredibly well, which is something I call “death bed reckoning”. Namely, when I struggle to make a decision, I think about how I’d view this decision one way or the other on my death bed. For whatever reason I have a lot of time on my hands in this imaginary bed.
So, for example, if I think, “I’ll regret it (on my death bed) if I don’t try, because it’s actually something I want to have at least attempted” then my answer is obvious, and I do it. If instead I think, “I won’t give a shit (on my death bed) if I do this or not” then I stop worrying and just do whatever I freaking feel like.
It’s actually incredibly nerdy if you think about it: an asymptotic limit of whether it matters and which direction it matters.
I recently came across a list of the “5 top regrets of dying people” with interest, since I think about death bed regrets so much. And guess what? I can happily say I’m avoiding those top 5 by living my life via death bed reckoning. They are (according to this possibly totally unscientific article):
- I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
- I wish I didn’t work so hard.
- I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
- I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
- I wish that I had let myself be happier.
I am going to restrain myself from giving you advice that’s more precise than this because I honestly know nothing about what it would mean for you to have the courage to live a life true to yourself. But the cool thing is you know what that means. Good luck!
Aunt Pythia
——
Dear Aunt Pythia,
I’ve been reading this blog by a total babe, and I love it. She is just so f*cking right all the time. I read her posts every day and I feel like telling her how much what she is writing comes from the bottom of my heart. It feels like having a mental hard on, but then I feel that it would be cheesy and cliche to say that. Do you know a good way to handle this situation?
Mental Hard On
Dear MHO,
I hear you, same thing happens to me. I feel like anything too overt would run the risk of giving her even more of a cult of personality – after all, I don’t want her to get all fake and/or self-conscious! What if she starts giving TED talks, for God’s sake!? That would be horrible.
Even so, I need to somehow feel close.
The best I’ve come up with to deal with my crush is to buy lots of t-shirts and coffee mugs that remind me of her so she’ll be with me in those stolen intimate moments I eke out in lavatory stalls.
Good luck!
AP
——
Dear Aunt Pythia,
I’ve been dating this amazing woman, but there’s one issue that I feel uneasy about (I’m a man).
She’s a few years older than I am, and very successful and well-regarded in her field. Her independence and intelligence, which are doubtless big contributors to her success, are also huge turn-ons for me. I have a lot of ambition, but in my profession, being good at what you do does not lead to much money or recognition without, in addition, a big stroke of luck.
I worry that if things grow more serious, the status-income inequality will become an issue. It doesn’t bother me, but I get anxious it might start to bother her down the line. Is that the same thing as it bothering me?
I know there’s some ingrained, implied sexism here on my part that on a conscious level I disagree with–it’s not from her these worries come but from some past experience and general societal input re: gender roles. How do I get over this anxiety–which, I stress, I think is MY problem–and not let it damage what could be something wonderful?
R. Burns
Dear Mr. Burns,
I want to separate the issues here a bit.
First of all, you’re right that it’s your problem, so don’t ascribe it to her until she starts saying something like, “I feel weird that I make more money than you.” But second of all, it’s not about money. It sounds like together you guys make enough. It’s really about status and recognition – outward success, if you will.
So putting those two things together, I’ll rephrase your question: Can I make myself feel like I deserve this sexy successful amazing woman who loves me even though my chosen field is difficult to break into and even though I have not yet achieved outward success? And the answer to that is, I hope so.
I’ll be honest with you: if you can’t figure out how to feel good about yourself, you might very well fuck up your relationship through sheer insecurity about your relative outward appearance of success. That would be a shame, but I’ve seen it happen.
There’s a part of us that wants to be able to parade our lovers in front of the world and shout, “look at who I’m with! I’m with a celebrity!” but there’s an even deeper part of us that wants to be with someone who has long-term goals, who is striving towards them, and who takes them seriously. I’ll bet you’re with someone who digs you on the second level. After all, she started dating you as you are.
As for myself, I’ve always been attracted to people who are really fucking good at something, but that thing could be playing the guitar, writing awesome code, or understanding politics. It’s the passion, the swagger, and the work ethic that matter, not the awards.
Good luck!
Aunt Pythia
——
Dear Aunt Pythia,
I am an undergraduate studying pure math and I can say with firm resolution that I love math and it will hold my intellectual attention for the rest of my life (no matter what I end up doing). That said, I will be 25 by the time I graduate and so I am more enticed by the prospect of finding a good job, being financially independent, and gaining real workplace experience once I finish rather than going to grad school for another 5-6 years (but don’t get me wrong, I absolutely want to get a PhD at some point).
How marketable could I be for those data science jobs with just a bachelor’s in math (even though I’m currently taking lots of grad math classes and have experience working in computational labs)? Would it be naive of me to think that I could find a job with just a bachelor’s, narrow down the potential array of dissertation topics I could undertake based on patterns/data that I see in real life, and then return to academia? I just fear being past the age of 30 with overly specialized knowledge of just one area of math with no other real job prospect than gaining membership to some Merlin-bearded, nerd-coven of mathematicians (again, not that I wouldn’t consider that awesome, I just want to have more than one option for the road ahead).
Absolutely Dreading Dissatisfaction
Dear ADD,
I don’t think one strictly needs a Ph.D. to get a job in data science, but one should certainly have the quantitative smarts to be able to get a Ph.D. in a hard science. It sounds like you have those smarts, and moreover you have experience in a computational lab (was that on a break from college?).
I think you should look for an internship with a tech data team over the summer and see how you like it and see how you fit in, etc. My guess is that your maturity and experience, combined with intense love of all things math, will go a long way both for you and for your colleagues.
I wish I had a place to send you for internships (readers, please comment below on where to find out how to apply to such things!) but start with a google search and some questions to your fellow nerds.
Good luck!
Aunt Pythia
——
Please please please submit questions, thanks!
Break up the megabanks already (#OWS)
For the past few months at Occupy we’ve been focusing more and more on having a single message and goal. That has been to break up the big banks.
What’s great about this goal is that it’s a non-partisan issue; there is growing consensus (among non-bankers) from the left and the right that the current situation is outrageous and untenable. What’s not great, of course, is that the situation is so easy to spot because it’s so heinous.
Yesterday another voice joined the Break-Up-The-Big-Banks chorus in the form of an editorial at Bloomberg (hat tip Hannah Appel). They wrote a persuasive piece on breaking up the big banks based on simple arithmetic involving bank profits and taxpayer subsidy. Even the title fits that description: “Why Should Taxpayers Give Big Banks $83 Billion a Year?”. Here’s an excerpt from the editorial (emphasis mine):
…Banks have a powerful incentive to get big and unwieldy. The larger they are, the more disastrous their failure would be and the more certain they can be of a government bailout in an emergency. The result is an implicit subsidy: The banks that are potentially the most dangerous can borrow at lower rates, because creditors perceive them as too big to fail.
Lately, economists have tried to pin down exactly how much the subsidy lowers big banks’ borrowing costs. In one relatively thorough effort, two researchers — Kenichi Ueda of the International Monetary Fund and Beatrice Weder di Mauro of the University of Mainz — put the number at about 0.8 percentage point. The discount applies to all their liabilities, including bonds and customer deposits.
Big Difference
Small as it might sound, 0.8 percentage point makes a big difference. Multiplied by the total liabilities of the 10 largest U.S. banks by assets, it amounts to a taxpayer subsidy of $83 billion a year. To put the figure in perspective, it’s tantamount to the government giving the banks about 3 cents of every tax dollar collected.
The top five banks — JPMorgan, Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. – – account for $64 billion of the total subsidy, an amount roughly equal to their typical annual profits (see tables for data on individual banks). In other words, the banks occupying the commanding heights of the U.S. financial industry — with almost $9 trillion in assets, more than half the size of the U.S. economy — would just about break even in the absence of corporate welfare. In large part, the profits they report are essentially transfers from taxpayers to their shareholders.
Next time someone tells me I want to take money out of rich people’s pockets (and that makes me a free market hater), I’m going to remind them that every time I pay taxes, 3 cents out of every dollar (that I know of) goes directly to the banks for no good reason whatsoever except the fact that they have the lobbyists to support this system. They’re bullies, and I hate bullies.
So no, I’m not suggesting we take honestly earned money out of the pockets of those who deserve it, I’m suggesting we stop stuffing insiders’ pockets with our money. Big difference.
But it’s not just money I object to – it’s future liability. There’s now an established track record of discovered criminal acts that don’t get anyone at the big banks in trouble. We are setting ourselves up for an even bigger bailout of some form soon, one that we taxpayers really may not be able to afford.
I think of the too-big-to-fail problem as like having an alcoholic brother-in-law who not only sleeps on your couch every night but also knows the PIN code on your ATM card. The money is irksome, no doubt, but what if that guy fell asleep smoking a cigarette and me and my kids die in the resulting fiery inferno? And it’s not that I think all addicts could be magically cured, but I don’t want them to have access to my personal stuff. Get them out of my house.
So can we break up the megabanks already? I’d really like to stop worrying about them because I have better things to do.
NYC data hackathons, past and future: Politics, Occupy, and Climate change (#OWS)
The past: Money in politics
First thing’s first, I went to the Bicoastal Datafest a few weekends ago and haven’t reported back. Mostly that’s because I got sick and didn’t go on the second day, but luckily other people did, like Kathy Kiely from the Sunlight Foundation, who wrote up this description of the event and the winning teams’ projects.
And hey, it turns out that my new company shares an office with Harmony Institute, whose data scientist Burton DeWilde was on the team that won “Best in Show” for their orchestral version of the federal government’s budget.
Another writeup of the event comes by way of Michael Lawson, who worked on the team that set up an accounting fraud detection system through Benford’s Law. I might be getting a guest blog post about this project through another one of its team members soon.
And we got some good progress on our DataKind/ Sunlight Foundation money-in-politics project as well, thanks to DataKind intern Pete Darche and math nerds Kevin Wilson and Johan de Jong.
The future one week from now: Occupy
Next up, on March 1st and 2nd at CUNY Graduate Center is this data hackathon called OccupyData (note this is a Friday and Saturday, which is unusual). You can register for the event here.
It’s a combination of an Occupy event and a datafest, so obviously I am going to try to go. The theme is general – data for the 99% – but there’s a discussion on this listserv as to the various topics people might want to focus on (Aaron Swartz and Occupy Sandy are coming up for example). I’m looking forward to reporting back (or reporting other people’s report-backs if my kids don’t let me go).
The future two weeks from now: Climate change
Finally, there’s this datathon, which doesn’t look open to registration, but which I’ll be participating in through my work. It’s stated goal is “to explore how social and meteorological data can be combined to enhance social science research on climate change and cities.” The datathon will run Saturday March 9th – Sunday March 10th, 2013, starting noon Saturday, with final presentations at noon Sunday. I’ll try to report back on that as well.
Mathbabe t-shirts for sale!
Hey I’ve just gotten my first shipment of mathbabe t-shirts and I love them so much I’ve made them available to anyone to order from Zazzle.
Here’s me wearing my t-shirt (my new logo is courtesy of my buddy Julie Steele):
And here’s the back:
But if that’s too strident for you, don’t despair! There’s an alternative back:
I know it’s a pretty good design because my fashion-focused 10-year-old wants one.
Here’s what you do if you want your very own mathbabe t-shirt:
- You will have to go to zazzle.com and start an account if you don’t already have one. I’m sorry about this but the alternative was to buy them all for you and then send them all to you separately, which I don’t have time for.
- Then go to this page on zazzle.com to buy the first version, or
- to this page on zazzle.com to get the more subdued second version.
- I’m also selling a mathbabe coffee mug.
- I’m also open to other products, tell me what you think.
Good news for professors: online courses suck
If this New York Times editorial is correct, and it certainly passes the smell test, students are not well-served by online courses but are by so-called “hybrid” courses, where there’s a bit of online stuff and also a bit of one-on-one time. From the editorial:
The research has shown over and over again that community college students who enroll in online courses are significantly more likely to fail or withdraw than those in traditional classes, which means that they spend hard-earned tuition dollars and get nothing in return. Worse still, low-performing students who may be just barely hanging on in traditional classes tend to fall even further behind in online courses.
This is important news for math departments, at least in the medium term (i.e. until machine learners figure out how to successfully simulate one-on-one interactions), because it means they won’t be replacing calculus class with a computer. And as every mathematician should know, calculus is the bread and butter of math departments.
Five false myths that make liberals feel good
1. The U.S. has a progressive tax code
Actually, no. Not when you include all kinds of taxes. From this Economist column, which states “The fact of the matter is that the American tax code as a whole is almost perfectly flat.”
2. The U.S. is a land of opportunity
Actually, the mobility of the U.S. is worse than Canada’s or anywhere in Western Europe. From the NY Times article:
Despite frequent references to the United States as a classless society, about 62 percent of Americans (male and female) raised in the top fifth of incomes stay in the top two-fifths, according to research by the Economic Mobility Project of the Pew Charitable Trusts. Similarly, 65 percent born in the bottom fifth stay in the bottom two-fifths.
3. The bailout worked
Actually, the bailout is still happening, as we see from monthly discoveries such as this recent back-door bailout, and it hasn’t worked for the majority of the people it was intended for, namely people stuck with unreasonable mortgages (people forget this sometimes, but the first half of TARP was for the banks, the second half was for mortgage holders). From a NY Times Op-ed by Elizabeth Lynch (emphasis mine):
So a lender can forgive a second mortgage — which in the event of foreclosure would be worthless anyway — and under the settlement claim credits for “modifying” the mortgage, while at the same time it or another bank forecloses on the first loan. The upshot, of course, is that the people the settlement was designed to protect keep losing their homes.
4. Our private data is protected by our government
Although on the one hand the CIA recently admitted to full monitoring of Facebook using fake personas (h/t Chris Wiggins), the U.S. government does not in fact take great pains to protect the data they collect about its citizens. Moreover, government workers who complain about the porous data protection are punished instead of protected, as is explained in this Times piece. My favorite quote is this bit of common sense:
Susan Landau, a Guggenheim fellow in cyber security, privacy and public policy, says companies and agencies are unlikely to improve data security without the threat of penalty.
“What are the personal consequences for employees who allow data breaches to happen?” Ms. Landau asks. “Until people lose their jobs, nothing is going to change.”
5. We are recovering from the great recession
From 2009-2011, the top 1% captured 121% of all income gains (h/t Matt Stoller).
Who says you can’t perform at 121%? Turns out you can if other people are actually losing income while you’re getting increasingly rich.
Don’t get me wrong, corporate profits have done even better – a 171% gains since we’ve had Obama. But I’d go by things that matter to the 99%, so payrolls and jobs. Payrolls are flat and we still have 5 million fewer jobs, so I’d say it’s not much of a recovery.
Phenomenal woman
Today’s post goes out to all the phenomenal women I am lucky to know and to love. It’s a gorgeous song based on this poem by Maya Angelou (h/t Becky Jaffe).
Aunt Pythia’s advice
Readers, I was really close to declaring this the last Aunt Pythia column.
My explanation was gonna be this: I am finding myself surprisingly unqualified to answer most of the questions submitted. I thought I was a loud mouth and would have no problem, but when people ask me hugely philosophical questions about the existence of god, or ask me questions about how to change fields from physics to politics, it just makes me feel very unthoughtful and small.
So in other words, as a mode of self-preservation, I was going to discontinue this practice and go back to doing stuff that makes me feel smart.
But after doing the actual writing (which you will find below) I’ve changed my mind. It’s too much fun! But I have fired you guys from answering a question each week since you suck at that.
If you don’t know what you’re in for, go here for past advice columns and here for an explanation of the name Pythia. Most importantly,
Please submit your question at the bottom of this column!!
——
Let’s start out with the question from last time that remained unanswered:
Dear Aunt Pythia,
As a graduate student, I enjoy attending departmental teas, if only because it’s an excuse to get away from the books for a few minutes. However, my department recently started having some of our teas sponsored by a trading firm. As somebody who has concerns about the finance industry, I am bothered by this. I thought about dumping all the tea in one of the fountains on campus, but I’d like to find a more constructive approach. Any suggestions?
Tea Party Patriot
TPP,
Interesting. Let me ask you this. Is the money given with strings attached? Do they also expect to be able to recruit math people on campus? Do they advertise their firm in some way at the teas? How do you happen to know who’s sponsoring it?
If one of the above is true, then yes I’d say dump the tea in a fountain, and object to the blatant commercialization of your department. But if none of the above is true, and if I haven’t forgotten something, then the money is a kind of bribe, but it’s lower level.
That is, your department is psyched to not pay for cookies, but over time the money that it’s saving will be used for other things, and people’s taste in cookies will be inflated because of the extra fancy cookies that finance people can afford, and there will be this weird dependency set up. At that point they may try to advertise or recruit, which is in my opinion totally outrageous on a campus and deserves some fountain dumping. Hopefully you can band together with other outraged folk and make a big scene of it.
Another possibility: if they are recruiting on campus, tell me where in advance and I’ll come recruit for Occupy at the next table.
Good luck, Patriot!
Aunt Pythia
——
Dear Aunt Pythia,
Dear Aunt Pythia, after living for quite a lot time I think my life has been mostly erratic and not driven by myself but for random forces beyond my scope. I don’t mean I am in a bad position. In fact I am quite happy and own everything I and my family need to live comfortably. However a lot of people think of themselves as making long term plans and succeding (or failing) at them. Sometimes I think there are essentialy different kinds of people (with and without living plans speaking on binary mode), sometimes I think they just deceive themselves. What do you think about? Do you have a long term plan for yourself?
Rooted At Nothing Durable On My Living Years
Dear RANDOMLY,
First, let me speak of my gratitude for your excellently chosen fake name, which translates so beautifully into an appropriate word (see how RANDOMLY did that, people?). Thank you so so much.
Second, you have essentially described me twice, in different parts of my life. So when I was 15 and went to math camp, I decided to become a math professor. For twenty pleasant years I was one of those people with a plan. Actually, my life wasn’t consistently pleasant during those years, but having a plan was a consistently pleasant part of my life.
But ever since I quit my math professor job at Barnard College in 2007, I’ve been adrift in a world without a plan. I essentially don’t know what the future will bring, nor do I want to know.
Back to your question: are long-term planners deceiving themselves? Yes and no.
Yes because, by dint of it being such a very long time before your plan is fulfilled, you will be a very different person by that time, and who knows if you will still have the same goals and interests. Chances are you won’t, and you’ll be less naive about the negatives of your plan, and your role models will have disappointed you, etc. Long-term plans are filled with bittersweet consequences.
On the other hand, I do think it can be good to have some plan, especially if you’re a woman. I don’t regret getting my Ph.D. in math for a second, partly because I learned so much (about math but also about myself, as trite as it sounds) and because it’s a pretty flexible achievement – people respect that on your resume. So in fact I tell young math nerd girls all the time to make it a goal of theirs to get their Ph.D. and then decide what’s next. I suggest that people have a long-term plan but keep in mind they can always change it.
Having a plan helped me make decisions, so in that sense it acted as a crutch (“Should I do this? Do math professors do this?”). Not having a plan has been harder but I luckily waited until I was old enough to deal with the uncertainty. It’s not unlike the feeling I described in this post about learning to not understand tensor products.
One thing that has surprised me about not having a plan is that you might expect I’d have less interest in learning new things, since learning can be seen as investing in a new long-term plan. But actually, if anything I’ve learned more, more quickly, since giving up plans, because I’ve been following my instincts and curiosity rather than my idea of the what would be appropriate for the person I expect to become. So that’s an advertisement for not having a plan, at least for me.
I hope this rambling answer has helped, RANDOMLY!
Aunt Pythia
——
Aunt P,
What’s the difference between a hipster and a nerd? Aren’t they both purported minorities with fringe obsessional interests? One of them is sexy while the other is only ironically sexy. But which is it?
Nerdster
Dear Nerdster,
I have never compared the two groups until now, but I’d argue that hipsters are generally hyper aware of what’s “normal” and act in constant reference to that, whereas nerds are oblivious to what’s normal, or at least ignore it because they’ve got more interesting things to think about. That’s a big difference.
Personally I find almost everything sexy, but if I had to decide between nerds and hipsters, I’d go with nerds. Here’s why: if you think about it, nerds in groups commonly invent their own universes (think “Star Trek”), which light the way to aspirational societies, which are very sexy. Even the singularity stuff is exciting in that kind of nerd nirvana way.
Whereas if you take the hipster to the asymptotic limit of his philosophical mindset, you get artisanal pencil sharpening.
I am completely willing to believe my vision is biased because I’m a nerd, by the way. Hipsters, please speak up for your peeps and correct me if I’m wrong about your sexiness.
Best,
AP
——
Dear Aunt Pythia,
I’m a queer gal and last year for about 5 months, I worked with an amazing woman and we got really close. We connected so well, unlike anyone I’ve met before. She’s married (to a guy) with kids, and I have a gf of 8 years, so nothing happened between us, but the possibility was there.
I’m in a new location (unrelated circumstances), and tried reconnecting with her via email but she never responded, so obviously I get the message. Trouble is, I can’t get her out of my head a year later. And the kicker is I’m doing a presentation at the old location in a few months. I want to see her and maybe I’ll get over this serious crush. Also, there are others I want to reconnect with, so I want to send out an email letting them know I’ll be back for a day. Questions: 1. Is including her in the email stupid? 2. How do I stop thinking about her?
Gal Apparently Yearning
Dear GAY,
First, thanks for the great fake name, it brings tears to my eyes that you guys are on top of this shit.
Next, let’s do this in cases. Best case scenario she’s in love with you but can’t handle it because she’s got kids and doesn’t want to fuck up her family. In that case your plan has to be super sexy but also protective of her life, so in other words send her a brief email that you’ll be back and, if she dares to see you, spend the whole time holding her hand, looking into her eyes, and talking about how beautiful she is and how you know she can’t jeopardize her family but you love her anyway. That makes a great story and it’s true.
Worst case scenario she doesn’t acknowledge even to herself that she’s in love with you. In that case same plan since you’ll never know which it is unless you try.
Good luck!! Tell me what happens!
Aunt Pythia
——
Please please please submit questions, thanks!
HSBC protest yesterday (#OWS)
Here’s a picture from yesterday (thanks Pam!):
This was near the end when some people had already left. We met on the steps of the NYPL as above but in between we went across the street and marched in front of HSBC, which was barricaded by the police. Indeed there were as many police, or more, as protesters. We chanted things like, “Stop and Frisk HSBC!” or “The banks got bailed out, we got sold out” but my favorite chant was a song Nick and Manny made up during the event:
Bankers and drug lords sittin’ in a tree
K-I-S-S-I-N-G
First comes love, then comes prrofit,
Then comes a settlement from the Justice De-partment!
Here’s a pic from the marching part with an appropriate Valentine’s Day theme (note the barricades behind the protesters):
And here’s me with my sandwich board. The front (note the long line of police motorcycles behind me):
And the back:
Also check out Taibbi’s HSBC article from yesterday.
There should be a macho way to say “I don’t know”
I recently gave an interview with Russ Roberts at EconTalk, which was fun and which has generated a lot of interesting feedback for me. I had no idea so many people listened to that podcast. Turns out it’ll eventually add up to something like 50,000, with half of those people listening this week. Cool!
One thing Russ and I talked about is still on my mind. Namely, how many problems are the direct result of people pretending to understand something, or exaggerating the certainty of an uncertain quantity. People just don’t acknowledge errorbars when they should!
What up, people?
Part of the problem exists because when we model something, the model typically just comes out with a single answer, usually a number, and it seems so certain to us, so tangible, even when we know that slightly different starting conditions or inputs to our models would have resulted in a different number.
So for example, an SAT score. We know that, on a different day with a different amount of sleep or a different test, we might score significantly differently. And yet the score is the score, and it’s hugely important and we brand ourselves with it as if it’s some kind of final word.
But another part of this problem is that people are seldom incentivized to admit they don’t know something. Indeed the ones we hear from the most are professional opinion-holders, and they are going to lose their audience and their gigs if they go on air saying, “I’m not sure what’s going to happen with [the economy], we’ve honestly never been in this situation before and our data is just not sufficient to make a prediction that’s worth its weight.”
You can replace “the economy” by anything and the problem still holds.
Who’s going to say that?? Someone who doesn’t mind losing their job is who. Which is too bad, because honest people do say that quite a large portion of the time. So professional opinion-holders are kind of trained to be dishonest in this way.
And so are TED talks, but that’s a vent for another day.
I wish there were a macho way to admit you didn’t know something, so people could understand that admitting uncertainty isn’t equivalent to being wishy-washy.
I mean, sometimes I want to bust out and say, “I don’t know that, and neither do you, motherfucker!” but I’m not sure how well that would go over. Some people get touchy about profanity.
But it’s getting there, and it points to something ironic about this uncertainty-as-wishy-washiness: it is sometimes macho to point out that other people are blowing smoke. In other words, I can be a whistle blower on other people’s illusion of certainty even when I can’t make being uncertain sound cool.
I think that explains, to some extent, why so many people end up criticizing other people for false claims rather than making a stance on uncertainty themselves. The other reason of course is that it’s easier to blow holes in other people’s theories, once stated, than it is to come up with a foolproof theory of one’s own.
Any suggestions for macho approaches to errorbars?
The smell test for big data
The other day I was chatting with a data scientist (who didn’t know me), and I asked him what he does. He said that he used social media graphs to see how we might influence people to lose weight.
Whaaaa? That doesn’t pass the smell test.
If I can imagine it happening in real life, between people, then I can imagine it happening in a social medium. If it doesn’t happen in real life, it doesn’t magically appear on the internet.
So if I have a huge crush on LeBron James (true), and if he tweets that I should go out and watch “Life of Pi” because it’s a great movie (true), then I’d do it, because I’d imagine he is here with me in my living room suggesting that I see that movie, and I’d do anything that man says if he’s in my living room, especially if he’s jamming with me.
Not actually my living room.
But if LeBron James tells me to lose weight while we’re hanging, then I just feel bad and weird. Because nobody can influence someone else to lose weight in person*.
Bottomline: there’s a smell test, and it states that real influence happening inside a social graph isn’t magical just because it’s mathematically formulated. It is at best an echo of the actual influence exerted in real life. I have yet to see a counter-example to that. If you have one, please challenge me on this.
Any data scientist going around claiming they’re going to surpass this smell test should stop right now, because it adds to the hype and adds to the noise around big data without adding to the conversation.
* I’ll make an exception if they’re a doctor wielding a surgical knife about to remove my stomach or something, which doesn’t translate well into social media, and might not always work long-term. And to be fair, you (or LeBron) can influence me to not eat a given thing on a given day, or even to go on a diet, but by now we should know that doesn’t have long term effects. There’s a reason Weight Watchers either doesn’t publish their results or relies on survivorship bias for fake results.
Johnson Research Labs
I have exciting news this morning.
I’ll be starting a new job next Monday at Johnson Research Labs (JRL). It’s made up of a small group of data scientists, social scientists, and cloud computing people working on interesting problems that will hopefully have a positive impact on the world. JRL was founded recently by David Park and John Johnson and is backed by Johnson.
My first job once I’m there will be to finish my book Doing Data Science with my co-author, Rachel Schutt, who is also joining JRL from Google. The book is based on Rachel’s data science class from last semester at Columbia which I blogged about here.
Ian Langmore and Daniel Krasner, who are co-teaching another class at Columbia this semester in applied data science (along with Chang She), are also working at JRL.
Occupy HSBC: Valentine’s Day protest at noon #OWS
Protest with #OWS Alternative Banking Group
I’m writing to invite you to a protest against mega-bank HSBC at noon on Valentine’s Day (Thursday) starting on the steps of the New York Public Library at 42nd and 5th. Details are here but it’s the big green box on the map on the Fifth Avenue side:
Why are we protesting?
Like you, I’m sure, I’d like nothing more than to stop worrying about shit that goes on in our country’s banks.
We have better things to do with out time than to get annoyed over enormous bonuses being given to idiots for their repeated failures. We’re frankly exhausted from the outrage.
I mean, the average person doesn’t have a job where they get an $11 million bonus instead of a $22 million dollar bonus when they royally screw up. Outside the surreal realm of international banking, the normal response to screw-ups on that level is to get fired.
You might expect a company that has been caught criminally screwing minorities out of fair contracts might be at risk of being closed down, but in this day and age you’d know that big banks, or TIBACO (too interconnected, big, and complex to oversee) institutions, as we in Alt Banking like to call them, are immune to such action.
There’s a clear evolving standard of treatment in the banking sector when it comes to criminal activity:
- the powers that be (SEC, DOJ, etc.) make a huge production over the severity of the fine,
- which is large in dollar amounts but
- usually represents about 10% of the overall profit the given banks made during their exploit.
- Nobody ever goes to jail, and
- the shareholders pay the fine, not the perpetrators.
- The perps get somewhat diminished bonuses. At worst.
The bottomline: we have an entire class of citizens that are immune to the laws because they are considered too important to our financial stability.
But why HSBC?
HSBC is a perfect example of this. An outrageous example.
HSBC didn’t get a bailout in 2008 like many other banks, even though they were ranked #2 in subprime mortgage lending. But that’s not because they didn’t lose money – in fact they lost $6 billion but somehow kept afloat.
And now we know why.
Namely, they were money-laundering, earning asstons by facilitating drugs and terrorism. This was blood money, make no mistake, and it went directly into the pockets of HSBC bankers in the form of bonuses.
When this years-long criminal mafia activity was discovered, nothing much happened beyond a fine, as per usual. Well, to be honest, they were fined $1.9 billion dollars, which is a lot of money, but is only 5 weeks of earnings for the mammoth institution – depending on the way you look at it, HSBC is the 2nd largest bank in the world.
Too big to jail
And that’s when “Too big to fail” became “Too big to jail.” Even the New York Times was outraged. From their editorial page:
Federal and state authorities have chosen not to indict HSBC, the London-based bank, on charges of vast and prolonged money laundering, for fear that criminal prosecution would topple the bank and, in the process, endanger the financial system. They also have not charged any top HSBC banker in the case, though it boggles the mind that a bank could launder money as HSBC did without anyone in a position of authority making culpable decisions.
Clearly, the government has bought into the notion that too big to fail is too big to jail. When prosecutors choose not to prosecute to the full extent of the law in a case as egregious as this, the law itself is diminished. The deterrence that comes from the threat of criminal prosecution is weakened, if not lost.
National Threat
You may recall that there was an extensive FBI investigation of OWS before Zuccotti Park was even occupied.
Ironic? As the Village Voice said, “apparently non-violent demonstration against corrupt banking is subject to more criminal scrutiny than actual corrupt banking.”
Question for you: which is the bigger national security threat, OWS or HSBC?
We demand
HSBC needs its license revoked, and there need to be prosecutions. Those who are guilty need to be punished or else we have an official invitation to criminal acts by bankers. We simply can’t live in a country which rewards this kind of behavior.
Mind you, this isn’t just about HSBC. This is about all the megabanks. Citi or BoA are exempt from prosecution, too. Our message needs to be “break up the megabanks”.
I’ll end with what Matt Taibbi had to say about the HSBC settlement:
On the other hand, if you are an important person, and you work for a big international bank, you won’t be prosecuted even if you launder nine billion dollars. Even if you actively collude with the people at the very top of the international narcotics trade, your punishment will be far smaller than that of the person at the very bottom of the world drug pyramid. You will be treated with more deference and sympathy than a junkie passing out on a subway car in Manhattan (using two seats of a subway car is a common prosecutable offense in this city). An international drug trafficker is a criminal and usually a murderer; the drug addict walking the street is one of his victims. But thanks to Breuer, we’re now in the business, officially, of jailing the victims and enabling the criminals.
Join us on Valentine’s Day at noon on the steps of the New York Public Library and help us Occupy HSBC. Please redistribute widely!
Gender bias in math
I don’t agree with everything she always says, but I agree with everything Izabella Laba says in this post called Gender Bias 101 For Mathematicians (hat tip Jordan Ellenberg). And I’m kind of jealous she put it together in such a fantastic no-bullshit way.
Namely, she debunks a bunch of myths of gender bias. Here’s my summary, but you should read the whole thing:
- Myth: Sexism in math is perpetrated mainly by a bunch of enormously sexist old guys. Izabella: Nope, it’s everyone, and there’s lots of evidence for that.
- Myth: The way to combat sexism is to find those guys and isolate them. Izabella: Nope, that won’t work, since it’s everyone.
- Myth: If it’s really everyone, it’s too hard to solve. Izabella: Not necessarily, and hey you are still trying to solve the Riemann Hypothesis even though that’s hard (my favorite argument).
- Myth: We should continue to debate about its existence rather than solution. Izabella: We are beyond that, it’s a waste of time, and I’m not going to waste my time anymore.
- Myth: Izabella, you are only writing this to be reassured. Izabella: Don’t patronize me.
Here’s what I’d add. I’ve been arguing for a long time that gender bias against girls in math starts young and starts at the cultural level. It has to do with expectations of oneself just as much as a bunch of nasty old men (by the way, the above is not to say there aren’t nasty old men (and nasty old women!), just that it’s not only about them).
My argument has been that the cultural differences are larger than the talent differences, something Larry Summers strangely dismissed without actually investigating in his famous speech.
And I think I’ve found the smoking gun for my side of this argument, in the form of an interactive New York Times graphic from last week’s Science section which I’ve screenshot here:
What this shows is that 15-year-old girls out-perform 15-year-old boys in certain countries and under-perform them in others. Those countries where they outperform boys is not random and has everything to do with cultural expectations and opportunities for girls in those countries and is explained to some extent by stereotype threat. Go read the article, it’s fascinating.
I’ll say again what I said already at the end of this post: the great news is that it is possible to address stereotype threat directly, which won’t solve everything but will go a long way.
You do it by emphasizing that mathematical talent is not inherent, nor fixed at birth, and that you can cultivate it and grow it over time and through hard work. I make this speech whenever I can to young people. Spread the word!
Aunt Pythia’s advice
Aunt Pythia is excited by all the snow outside and has at least a couple of appointments with a sled this morning, but before she runs off she’d like to spread her words of wisdom to her good readers.
If you don’t know what you’re in for, go here for past advice columns and here for an explanation of the name Pythia, and most importantly, please submit your question at the bottom of this column!!
And… thank you for making your questions funny and/or outrageous. Extra points if your fake name is also funny before or after I shorten it into initials. For example, you could sign your letter “From A Rotten Town”. And when I say “funny” I could mean “puerile”.
From last time:
——
Aunt Pythia,
How do you explain your work (and its importance/relevance to the world) to laypeople? I’m interested in your answers to this question for math, for finance, and for data science.
Pre-Expositor
Dear Pre-Expositor,
First, reader Mr. Exposition had this to suggest:
When non-mathematicians ask, I usually start off by describing something simple in my general area of math that has a cool real-life application. If and only if they then ask me about what I do in particular, I start breaking out the analogies and trying to give them an idea. (This gives the other person an escape valve if they wanted to be polite but don’t want to have an intense conversation.)
I’ll add a few words too. I think it helps to know a bit about the person you’re talking to. Are they wondering what math could be useful for at all? Or are they physicists? The answer is going to depend a lot on who your audience is.
Sometimes it turns out they want to be convinced that math can be interesting to someone in its own right, and why, but sometimes they might just want to knowhow the lifestyle of a mathematician is different from that of a high school teacher. I am happy to have those conversations and leave it at that. I especially love the “why is math important one” because people who ask it often answer it without my help.
If they really want to get into the details of what you think about on a daily basis, which is pretty rare, then as a data scientist I compare my approaches to something they are aware of, for example a Netflix-like recommendation system, or a Google search-like algorithm, or a finance-style trading algorithm.
If they want to talk about what I did as an academic mathematician, I talk about elementary diophantine equations and how they get increasingly difficult as you increase the degree, and if they’re still with me I talk about seeing solutions through the eyes of individual primes, and if they are still with me I talk about the local-global principle.
I don’t try to sell academic research math as important per se, just as fascinating and beautiful.
I hope that helps,
Aunt Pythia
——
Dear Aunt Pythia,
You seem like a very un-neurotic person. What’s your secret? Do you have personal demons? What’s your go-to strategy for when they rear their ugly heads?
Wanna-be neuroses-free
Dear Wbnf,
I do of course have personal demons, as everybody does. I often find myself waking up at 3am thinking about things I’m behind on or things I wish had gone better. I have two pieces of advice for this kind of thing.
First, use suppression. I think suppression has a bad name. People think of it as a bad thing. They say stuff like, “oh you’re just suppressed” like that’s a crime.
But I say, use suppression to your advantage! If you can’t fix something that’s bothering you, agree to ignore it (which is an agreement you make with yourself, so nobody can even complain about it). And I don’t mean ignore it forever, either. Just make a plan to start thinking about it if and when you might have control over it. OWN your suppression and it will give back to you.
So for example, if you are stressing about your kid getting into a good kindergarten in New York City, then do what you can in terms of looking up schools and applying to them, and then after that, start up the suppression motors til you hear back. There’s absolutely nothing you can do in the meantime except fret, and you have better things to do with your time. Suppression is your friend!
Second, be pro-active. I know that’s a trite, overused phrase, but there may not be another word that means what I want to say – namely, do your best, to the best of your knowledge, on whatever it is, and forgive yourself in advance if that wasn’t enough. Of couse sometimes it wasn’t, and you have to live with the consequences, and sometimes you take notes on what would have been better. That’s ok, because the third thing is you gotta forgive yourself. It’s so obvious I won’t even make it a separate thing.
In my experience, being pro-active about something in advance, followed by 100% suppression mode, works a lot better than constantly putting something off and feeling guilty about it.
By the way, one more thing. I also let things slide. If I can’t get myself into enough of a froth to be pro-active about something, then I just let it go and I don’t look back (I do this via suppression, see above). It’s important to know when to do that too.
I hope that helps!
Cathy
——
Dear Aunt Pythia,
I’ve decided to leave academia and become a research scientist in the tech world. In addition to my area of math, I know a bit of programming and machine learning. What else can I learn in the next few months to better prepare myself?
Rambling On
Dear Rambling,
Great question, but I’m not sure how many “research scientist” positions there are in the tech world. Most of them don’t want you to research, they want you to model! So I’m going to assume you meant something like “data scientist” if that’s ok.
First, learn python, for reals. Next, learn statistics, enough so you can explain to anyone what statistical significance is and mean it. Then, read the book I’m writing with Rachel Schutt, Doing Data Science. Oh wait, it’s not out yet. So for now, read the notes I took on Rachel’s Columbia Data Science class last semester.
And to test your new knowledge, implement the recommendation system using python. And send me the code! We’d love to have it for the book, thanks.
Good luck,
Auntie P
——
Now it’s time for you guys to help me answer a question. I’ve got a juicy one for you:
Dear Aunt Pythia,
As a graduate student, I enjoy attending departmental teas, if only because it’s an excuse to get away from the books for a few minutes. However, my department recently started having some of our teas sponsored by a trading firm. As somebody who has concerns about the finance industry, I am bothered by this. I thought about dumping all the tea in one of the fountains on campus, but I’d like to find a more constructive approach. Any suggestions?
Tea Party Patriot
——
Please please please submit questions, thanks!
mathbabe 
