"F. George McDuffee" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 10 May 2009 16:09:53 -0700, "John R. Carroll"
wrote:


"F. George McDuffee" wrote in message
. ..
On Fri, 8 May 2009 15:33:52 -0700, "John R. Carroll"
wrote:

snip
I am interested in your use of fractals distributions as modeling
tools. I am sure that you have read "The (mis)behavior of
markets" by Mandelbrot. Any comments that you can share?

I have, as well as Kantor's and Koch's work. That's where all this stuff
started you know - an offshoot of Euclidean Geometry.
That's where you start with fractal geometry. Mandelbrot's "Fractal
Geometry of Nature" was the first of his publications that I read.
One thing all of these guys had in common was they were seen as kooks by a
lot of their peers. LOL
See if you can find a copy of Mandelbrot's article about the coastline of
England. It's a good explanation of Koch's pathalogical curves.
A pathalogical curve appears fixed and closed bit it's actually infinitely
long and, therefore, can't be closed. I've read a lot of descriptions of
economies throughout time but "Pathalogical Curved Geometry" is head and
shoulders the best.
It appears to me that everything created by euther man or nature has to be
fractal, ie. self similar in its shape, to work. That means an exact
geometric solution. There really isn't ten ways to skin a cat, you only
think there is, and the first tsk was to do a mathematical proof.
Fortunately, that had been done and for a seemingly unrelated application -
antennas. A group in Santa Ana that was working on a multi frequency antenna
did the math and found not that here's a way of doing it and there's a lot
of other ways of doing it. It turned out, mathematically, they were able to
demonstrate that there was only technique they could use to get their
antenna to work. Another fortunate happenstance was that they were one of my
customers.

Were
you able to identify any attractors? Were you using a Monte
Carlo simulation approach,

No, you wouldn't use itterative guessing but as it turns out you can express
Monte Carlo scenarios as fractals if you want to.
Did you read what the Navy did to find the last hydrogen bomb they lost in
the Atlantic? Mandelbrot would have saved them a lot of time.
Pretty funny don't you think?
I used to take peoples lunch money by betting them that I cound draw and
then mathematically describe a nurbs curve made from a piece of string.
Guess what I drew? A circle!
LOL
Have some fun yourself sometime and ask an undergrad to express the energy
model for mamals as fractal geometry..
The answer is E=MC Squared.+C. Really, there is an experimental proof.
Einstein expressed the relationship between mass and energy as fractal
geometry. He probably even realized it.

or attempting to directly "solve"
Leontev I/O matrix with fractal equations for [some of the]
elements?

All of the elements, not some, even the behavioral stuff, and you can ( I
think we did ) create a model that builds itself to fit the granularity of
the number of constraints. The only limit is hardware based. You have seen
the combined Julia Set expressed graphically haven't you? You must have.

As an aside, there is a new search engine on the horizon and from what I
know, it's almost certainly driven by a fractal engine.
It would take to long to "learn" what it needed to "Know" to be useful
otherwise.
I've heard it's busted, or perhaps doesn't live up to it's billing. The
release date is coming up pretty soon.


Given its publication date of 2004, with some of the more
important conclusions reached/published much earlier, such as
using the Cauchey rather than the Gausian/normal distribution for
financial modeling based on the actual examination of prices, in
some cases for more than 100 years [cotton trading], rather than
the ease of calculation, it does indeed appear that the model
that would gave the desired results was selected.

Doesn't it just.
You'd expect that from a bunch of lawyers and MBA's though.
Technicians are annoying if they can't provide anything that goes to the
bottom line.
Analysts are employed in the same way, as you know. Their job is to create
metrics that reinforce whatever bill of goods that has been sold.


As you point out, it is entirely possible to have a model of
great complexity and indeed "beauty" which is mathematically
correct, even brilliant, but totally misleading because the basic
assumptions on which it is based are incorrect. Two example that
come to mind are Astrology and Numerology. However it should be
noted that both of these "sciences" have had considerable
influence on human conduct, and continue to do so even today,
e.g. the management of the Orange County [California] investment
pool. Indeed, many papers continue to have an astrology column
and publish the day's "lucky" number.

You raise a very interesting philosophical point about the nature
and meaning of "future." Is it fixed and determinant, and thus
capable of being described by a single index or coefficient, or
is it probalistic/stochastic and best described by a probability
distribution?

Neither and both. The answer depends on what you do about granularity.
You are really talking about geometry that lives in the space between two
and three dimensions.
The more granular you are, the closer you get to 3D. You cannot, however,
get all the way there - by definition.
The solution is exact but that solution varies with granularity. You can fix
one or the other but not both. That is where the model, degenerates and why
mine kept crashing. You can't thread the needle unless you can grab the end
of the thread and there isn't one - there appears to be, but there isn't
because the thread is infinitely long.
Does that make sense to you?
I'm sick and also tired and it just looks a little like gibberish to me.



You again appear to be correct when you observe:
The Obama administration and the American public need to just suck it
up,
quit crying like a bunch of Nancy boys and get the hell on with it.
the problem being this is major surgery, like a limb amputation,
and at least on the political side no one wants to antagonize the
banksters/broksters and/or lose their campaign contributions.

I think we will be crossing that Rubicon presently George.
In fact, the Banksters are trying to get out in front of the charge.
Funniest thing I've seen in a while.

"The backlash against the investment professionals is so sharp that in
recognition of public outrage, the financial planning industry is asking
Congress to create a national organization to regulate its ranks."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...l?hpid=topnews

However it does appear at this point that it is like a severe
case of "gas gangrene," in that the choice is between losing the
limb and losing your life, not between losing and not losing a
limb.

I couldn't turn the word earlier but what I would have said was that we are
currently triaging the patient. That is exactly correct and I believe that
the dudes running this clusterF**K knew all along what the real underlying
problem was. They stopped trading derivative financial products almost
completely for no real reason after all. They wouldn't have done that if
they really believed in Li's model. His model says it doesn't matter,
remember?
Ya', right - Okie Dokie.....

I think this is one of the big differences between Bush/Paulson and
Obama/Geithner. The latter intends to be deliberate and pragmatic.
The former was just putting out fires willy nilly, or trying to anyway. It
was terrible to have all this come to a head in an election year.


You may very well be correct when you observe
The first ommision is that the financial services industry has been
sucking
more than six hundred billion dollars per year from the real economy since
the turn of the century, more or less, and you can't remove that much zero
return capital without consequences.
Indeed, the total amount "skimmed" may even be higher if the
defined benefit pension funds, 401ks, and insurance companies on
the borders of the financial services industry are included. Any
idea where this money is going/has gone?

John Boggle spells this out in one of his books but you can search
Charlierose.com for an interview that is illuminating.
Basically, the money disappeared as fees, commisions, bonus pools, corporate
perks and so forth.


We are living in interesting times....

So did that French broad, Marie something or other.

LOL

JC