Check out these links....

http://tinyurl.com/7lfn7y8

http://tinyurl.com/c5hrbr


...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |

I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Jim Thompson wrote:

Check out these links....

http://tinyurl.com/7lfn7y8

http://tinyurl.com/c5hrbr


One wonders about what those rankings include. At a lot of the most
prestigious schools in the US, the famous professors can't be bothered
with undergraduates. Stanford was an amazing place to be a grad
student, though.

On the other hand, at UBC, where I went, and the University of Toronto,
and UConn (where my #2 daughter and my son go, respectively), the very
best faculty do a lot of teaching undergrads. My third year
electromagnetics class was taught by Prof. Bill Unruh, a leading light
in general relativity, and many of the others were also taught at a very
high level. One of my fourth-year honours astronomy classes was
scheduled to be taught in the prof's office, but there was one more
student than there were chairs, so we moved to a classroom--and that was
at a school with 30k students.

Both my son and my daughter had the dean of the faculty as their
undergraduate advisors. That sure doesn't grow on trees at the Ivies.

So the wisdom is to go to a big teaching school for a bachelor's degree,
and a top research school for graduate work, when possible.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs



--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
845-480-2058

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net

Jim Thompson wrote:
Check out these links....

http://tinyurl.com/7lfn7y8
http://tinyurl.com/c5hrbr

Were you hoping MIT would be #1 in both? :-)

Annoying that the second link ranks the hot categories in engineering
as, "computer, mechanical, civil." So much for electrical...

Hmm... ~$40k/year at MIT just for tuition... probably around $50k with
housing and books and what-not? $200k for a four-year degree? That's
just... incredible...

Too bad they don't rate schools on a basis along the lines of value of
education received per dollar of tuition.

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 16:48:33 -0400, Phil Hobbs
wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:

Check out these links....

http://tinyurl.com/7lfn7y8

http://tinyurl.com/c5hrbr


One wonders about what those rankings include. At a lot of the most
prestigious schools in the US, the famous professors can't be bothered
with undergraduates. Stanford was an amazing place to be a grad
student, though.

On the other hand, at UBC, where I went, and the University of Toronto,
and UConn (where my #2 daughter and my son go, respectively), the very
best faculty do a lot of teaching undergrads. My third year
electromagnetics class was taught by Prof. Bill Unruh, a leading light
in general relativity, and many of the others were also taught at a very
high level. One of my fourth-year honours astronomy classes was
scheduled to be taught in the prof's office, but there was one more
student than there were chairs, so we moved to a classroom--and that was
at a school with 30k students.

Both my son and my daughter had the dean of the faculty as their
undergraduate advisors. That sure doesn't grow on trees at the Ivies.

So the wisdom is to go to a big teaching school for a bachelor's degree,
and a top research school for graduate work, when possible.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

At MIT, undergrad, I had all the "famous" profs. Sometimes that's not
so good. I had White of White & Woodson, "Electromechanical Energy
Conversion". He was a dud, never prepared and a poor instructor. We
petitioned and got him replaced... by Paul Penfield, then just a
graduate student, but an absolutely great instructor... and he went on
to great fame of his own. (I also tech'd for Woodson in his MHD lab,
so I got some very good first-hand advice from him :-)

...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |

I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 13:54:56 -0700, Joel Koltner
wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:
Check out these links....

http://tinyurl.com/7lfn7y8
http://tinyurl.com/c5hrbr

Were you hoping MIT would be #1 in both? :-)

Annoying that the second link ranks the hot categories in engineering
as, "computer, mechanical, civil." So much for electrical...

Hmm... ~$40k/year at MIT just for tuition... probably around $50k with
housing and books and what-not? $200k for a four-year degree? That's
just... incredible...

We had a riot one time, "$1100 is too damn much" :-)

(Though it really didn't affect me... I had a full Alumni Fund
National Scholarship.)


Too bad they don't rate schools on a basis along the lines of value of
education received per dollar of tuition.

I often refer youngsters in my neighborhood to Harvey Mudd... quite a
good school.

...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |

I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Jim Thompson wrote:

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 16:48:33 -0400, Phil Hobbs
wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:

Check out these links....

http://tinyurl.com/7lfn7y8

http://tinyurl.com/c5hrbr


One wonders about what those rankings include. At a lot of the most
prestigious schools in the US, the famous professors can't be bothered
with undergraduates. Stanford was an amazing place to be a grad
student, though.

On the other hand, at UBC, where I went, and the University of Toronto,
and UConn (where my #2 daughter and my son go, respectively), the very
best faculty do a lot of teaching undergrads. My third year
electromagnetics class was taught by Prof. Bill Unruh, a leading light
in general relativity, and many of the others were also taught at a very
high level. One of my fourth-year honours astronomy classes was
scheduled to be taught in the prof's office, but there was one more
student than there were chairs, so we moved to a classroom--and that was
at a school with 30k students.

Both my son and my daughter had the dean of the faculty as their
undergraduate advisors. That sure doesn't grow on trees at the Ivies.

So the wisdom is to go to a big teaching school for a bachelor's degree,
and a top research school for graduate work, when possible.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

At MIT, undergrad, I had all the "famous" profs. Sometimes that's not
so good. I had White of White & Woodson, "Electromechanical Energy
Conversion". He was a dud, never prepared and a poor instructor. We
petitioned and got him replaced... by Paul Penfield, then just a
graduate student, but an absolutely great instructor... and he went on
to great fame of his own. (I also tech'd for Woodson in his MHD lab,
so I got some very good first-hand advice from him :-)


Not caring about preparation is one species of "can't be bothered". I
never had that at UBC, and had only one at Stanford--my first-year
graduate quantum prof, who shall remain nameless, except that he was the
one who first calculated the cosmic deuterium abundance from the Big
Bang, and showed that the universe couldn't be closed because there was
too much D.

Nice enough guy, didn't care about teaching.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs
--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
845-480-2058

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 17:09:23 -0400, Phil Hobbs
wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 16:48:33 -0400, Phil Hobbs
wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:

Check out these links....

http://tinyurl.com/7lfn7y8

http://tinyurl.com/c5hrbr


One wonders about what those rankings include. At a lot of the most
prestigious schools in the US, the famous professors can't be bothered
with undergraduates. Stanford was an amazing place to be a grad
student, though.

On the other hand, at UBC, where I went, and the University of Toronto,
and UConn (where my #2 daughter and my son go, respectively), the very
best faculty do a lot of teaching undergrads. My third year
electromagnetics class was taught by Prof. Bill Unruh, a leading light
in general relativity, and many of the others were also taught at a very
high level. One of my fourth-year honours astronomy classes was
scheduled to be taught in the prof's office, but there was one more
student than there were chairs, so we moved to a classroom--and that was
at a school with 30k students.

Both my son and my daughter had the dean of the faculty as their
undergraduate advisors. That sure doesn't grow on trees at the Ivies.

So the wisdom is to go to a big teaching school for a bachelor's degree,
and a top research school for graduate work, when possible.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

At MIT, undergrad, I had all the "famous" profs. Sometimes that's not
so good. I had White of White & Woodson, "Electromechanical Energy
Conversion". He was a dud, never prepared and a poor instructor. We
petitioned and got him replaced... by Paul Penfield, then just a
graduate student, but an absolutely great instructor... and he went on
to great fame of his own. (I also tech'd for Woodson in his MHD lab,
so I got some very good first-hand advice from him :-)


Not caring about preparation is one species of "can't be bothered". I
never had that at UBC, and had only one at Stanford--my first-year
graduate quantum prof, who shall remain nameless, except that he was the
one who first calculated the cosmic deuterium abundance from the Big
Bang, and showed that the universe couldn't be closed because there was
too much D.

Nice enough guy, didn't care about teaching.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Quantum profs seem to be like that... we had our chant, "Pless is a
plick"... my "nameless" advantage is that almost all of my profs are
dead ;-)

...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |

I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Jim Thompson wrote:

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 17:09:23 -0400, Phil Hobbs
wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 16:48:33 -0400, Phil Hobbs
wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:

Check out these links....

http://tinyurl.com/7lfn7y8

http://tinyurl.com/c5hrbr


One wonders about what those rankings include. At a lot of the most
prestigious schools in the US, the famous professors can't be bothered
with undergraduates. Stanford was an amazing place to be a grad
student, though.

On the other hand, at UBC, where I went, and the University of Toronto,
and UConn (where my #2 daughter and my son go, respectively), the very
best faculty do a lot of teaching undergrads. My third year
electromagnetics class was taught by Prof. Bill Unruh, a leading light
in general relativity, and many of the others were also taught at a very
high level. One of my fourth-year honours astronomy classes was
scheduled to be taught in the prof's office, but there was one more
student than there were chairs, so we moved to a classroom--and that was
at a school with 30k students.

Both my son and my daughter had the dean of the faculty as their
undergraduate advisors. That sure doesn't grow on trees at the Ivies.

So the wisdom is to go to a big teaching school for a bachelor's degree,
and a top research school for graduate work, when possible.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

At MIT, undergrad, I had all the "famous" profs. Sometimes that's not
so good. I had White of White & Woodson, "Electromechanical Energy
Conversion". He was a dud, never prepared and a poor instructor. We
petitioned and got him replaced... by Paul Penfield, then just a
graduate student, but an absolutely great instructor... and he went on
to great fame of his own. (I also tech'd for Woodson in his MHD lab,
so I got some very good first-hand advice from him :-)


Not caring about preparation is one species of "can't be bothered". I
never had that at UBC, and had only one at Stanford--my first-year
graduate quantum prof, who shall remain nameless, except that he was the
one who first calculated the cosmic deuterium abundance from the Big
Bang, and showed that the universe couldn't be closed because there was
too much D.

Nice enough guy, didn't care about teaching.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Quantum profs seem to be like that... we had our chant, "Pless is a
plick"... my "nameless" advantage is that almost all of my profs are
dead ;-)

My other quantum profs were mostly very good, especially Michael Peskin,
who taught graduate statistical mechanics, and Sandy Fetter, who taught
graduate electromagnetics and many body quantum field theory. (I did
fine in many-body, but dropped my one graduate solid state physics
course--unfortunate, but for a very fortunate reason: my #1 daughter was
born the week before the midterm.) It was taught by Walt Harrison, who
was the biggest wildman in all of solid state. Completely buttoned-down
personally, but completely untrammelled in physics. He was the one who
coined the term "muffin-tin orbital".

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
845-480-2058

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 13:54:56 -0700, Joel Koltner
wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:
Check out these links....

http://tinyurl.com/7lfn7y8
http://tinyurl.com/c5hrbr

Were you hoping MIT would be #1 in both? :-)

Annoying that the second link ranks the hot categories in engineering
as, "computer, mechanical, civil." So much for electrical...

Hmm... ~$40k/year at MIT just for tuition... probably around $50k with
housing and books and what-not? $200k for a four-year degree? That's
just... incredible...

Too bad they don't rate schools on a basis along the lines of value of
education received per dollar of tuition.

Increasingly, grads of Harvard, Princeton, and MIT are working on Wall
Street. "Quants", they are called, using their math skills to skim
hundredths of a percent off the stock market.


--

John Larkin, President
Highland Technology, Inc

jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

Precision electronic instrumentation
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators
Custom laser controllers
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links
VME thermocouple, LVDT, synchro acquisition and simulation

John Larkin wrote:
On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 13:54:56 -0700, Joel Koltner
wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:
Check out these links....

http://tinyurl.com/7lfn7y8
http://tinyurl.com/c5hrbr

Were you hoping MIT would be #1 in both? :-)

Annoying that the second link ranks the hot categories in engineering
as, "computer, mechanical, civil." So much for electrical...

Hmm... ~$40k/year at MIT just for tuition... probably around $50k with
housing and books and what-not? $200k for a four-year degree? That's
just... incredible...

Too bad they don't rate schools on a basis along the lines of value of
education received per dollar of tuition.

Increasingly, grads of Harvard, Princeton, and MIT are working on Wall
Street. "Quants", they are called, using their math skills to skim
hundredths of a percent off the stock market.




Not undergrads. PhDs.

--
Les Cargill

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 13:59:53 -0700, Jim Thompson
wrote:

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 16:48:33 -0400, Phil Hobbs
wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:

Check out these links....

http://tinyurl.com/7lfn7y8

http://tinyurl.com/c5hrbr


One wonders about what those rankings include. At a lot of the most
prestigious schools in the US, the famous professors can't be bothered
with undergraduates. Stanford was an amazing place to be a grad
student, though.

On the other hand, at UBC, where I went, and the University of Toronto,
and UConn (where my #2 daughter and my son go, respectively), the very
best faculty do a lot of teaching undergrads. My third year
electromagnetics class was taught by Prof. Bill Unruh, a leading light
in general relativity, and many of the others were also taught at a very
high level. One of my fourth-year honours astronomy classes was
scheduled to be taught in the prof's office, but there was one more
student than there were chairs, so we moved to a classroom--and that was
at a school with 30k students.

Both my son and my daughter had the dean of the faculty as their
undergraduate advisors. That sure doesn't grow on trees at the Ivies.

So the wisdom is to go to a big teaching school for a bachelor's degree,
and a top research school for graduate work, when possible.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

At MIT, undergrad, I had all the "famous" profs. Sometimes that's not
so good. I had White of White & Woodson, "Electromechanical Energy
Conversion". He was a dud, never prepared and a poor instructor. We
petitioned and got him replaced... by Paul Penfield, then just a
graduate student, but an absolutely great instructor... and he went on
to great fame of his own. (I also tech'd for Woodson in his MHD lab,
so I got some very good first-hand advice from him :-)


I did my EE undergrad at General Motors Institute in the
late '60s. (It's now Kettering University.) Lots of
unknown profs, who didn't do research or publish. Went to
University of Michigan for grad school (bioengineering),
which was just the opposite. Guess which one had better
teaching?

I was shocked when I got to UM, because the teaching was (by
comparison) pretty much non-existent. Their theory was
apparently that you learn things better if you have to spend
a lot of time figuring them out for yourself. So they
assigned problems from the book and let you bang your head
against the wall, then the next day they explained how to
work them. (One of the worst offenders, by the way, was
Emmett Leith... brilliant scientist, co-inventer of laser
holography, but definitely not a teacher!)

I decided that the GMI profs had been hired to *teach*, not
to pursue research glory, and teach they did. They would
explain the general approaches to solving certain types of
problems, and work out examples *before* assigning the
homework. Yeah, baby hand-holding stuff, but it worked
better for me. YMMV.

Best regards,


Bob Masta

DAQARTA v6.02
Data AcQuisition And Real-Time Analysis
www.daqarta.com
Scope, Spectrum, Spectrogram, Sound Level Meter
Frequency Counter, FREE Signal Generator
Pitch Track, Pitch-to-MIDI
Science with your sound card!

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 18:14:55 -0700, John Larkin
wrote:

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 13:54:56 -0700, Joel Koltner
wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:
Check out these links....

http://tinyurl.com/7lfn7y8
http://tinyurl.com/c5hrbr

Were you hoping MIT would be #1 in both? :-)

Annoying that the second link ranks the hot categories in engineering
as, "computer, mechanical, civil." So much for electrical...

Hmm... ~$40k/year at MIT just for tuition... probably around $50k with
housing and books and what-not? $200k for a four-year degree? That's
just... incredible...

Too bad they don't rate schools on a basis along the lines of value of
education received per dollar of tuition.

Increasingly, grads of Harvard, Princeton, and MIT are working on Wall
Street. "Quants", they are called, using their math skills to skim
hundredths of a percent off the stock market.

---
How does that work, exactly?

--
JF

On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 17:57:53 -0500, John Fields
wrote:

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 18:14:55 -0700, John Larkin
wrote:

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 13:54:56 -0700, Joel Koltner
wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:
Check out these links....

http://tinyurl.com/7lfn7y8
http://tinyurl.com/c5hrbr

Were you hoping MIT would be #1 in both? :-)

Annoying that the second link ranks the hot categories in engineering
as, "computer, mechanical, civil." So much for electrical...

Hmm... ~$40k/year at MIT just for tuition... probably around $50k with
housing and books and what-not? $200k for a four-year degree? That's
just... incredible...

Too bad they don't rate schools on a basis along the lines of value of
education received per dollar of tuition.

Increasingly, grads of Harvard, Princeton, and MIT are working on Wall
Street. "Quants", they are called, using their math skills to skim
hundredths of a percent off the stock market.

---
How does that work, exactly?

I don't know the details, but there are companies that have set up
just next door to the NYSE and such, to shave milliseconds off their
transaction delays. They spot tiny differences in buy/sell
opportunities and trade stocks for literally seconds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_trading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_trading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-frequency_trading


This, done by hundreds of players, could have interesting
instabilities.

This sounds like pure parasitism to me, and soaks up some of the best
math grads in the country. A small transaction tax would kill this
off.


--

John Larkin, President
Highland Technology, Inc

jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

Precision electronic instrumentation
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators
Custom laser controllers
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links
VME thermocouple, LVDT, synchro acquisition and simulation

Bob Masta wrote:
On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 13:59:53 -0700, Jim Thompson
wrote:

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 16:48:33 -0400, Phil Hobbs
wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:
Check out these links....

http://tinyurl.com/7lfn7y8

http://tinyurl.com/c5hrbr

One wonders about what those rankings include. At a lot of the most
prestigious schools in the US, the famous professors can't be bothered
with undergraduates. Stanford was an amazing place to be a grad
student, though.

On the other hand, at UBC, where I went, and the University of Toronto,
and UConn (where my #2 daughter and my son go, respectively), the very
best faculty do a lot of teaching undergrads. My third year
electromagnetics class was taught by Prof. Bill Unruh, a leading light
in general relativity, and many of the others were also taught at a very
high level. One of my fourth-year honours astronomy classes was
scheduled to be taught in the prof's office, but there was one more
student than there were chairs, so we moved to a classroom--and that was
at a school with 30k students.

Both my son and my daughter had the dean of the faculty as their
undergraduate advisors. That sure doesn't grow on trees at the Ivies.

So the wisdom is to go to a big teaching school for a bachelor's degree,
and a top research school for graduate work, when possible.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs
At MIT, undergrad, I had all the "famous" profs. Sometimes that's not
so good. I had White of White & Woodson, "Electromechanical Energy
Conversion". He was a dud, never prepared and a poor instructor. We
petitioned and got him replaced... by Paul Penfield, then just a
graduate student, but an absolutely great instructor... and he went on
to great fame of his own. (I also tech'd for Woodson in his MHD lab,
so I got some very good first-hand advice from him :-)


I did my EE undergrad at General Motors Institute in the
late '60s. (It's now Kettering University.) Lots of
unknown profs, who didn't do research or publish. Went to
University of Michigan for grad school (bioengineering),
which was just the opposite. Guess which one had better
teaching?

I was shocked when I got to UM, because the teaching was (by
comparison) pretty much non-existent. Their theory was
apparently that you learn things better if you have to spend
a lot of time figuring them out for yourself. So they
assigned problems from the book and let you bang your head
against the wall, then the next day they explained how to
work them. (One of the worst offenders, by the way, was
Emmett Leith... brilliant scientist, co-inventer of laser
holography, but definitely not a teacher!)

I decided that the GMI profs had been hired to *teach*, not
to pursue research glory, and teach they did. They would
explain the general approaches to solving certain types of
problems, and work out examples *before* assigning the
homework. Yeah, baby hand-holding stuff, but it worked
better for me. YMMV.
Best regards,
Bob Masta

The subject is 'subjective', so I'm inclined to agree.
I was a self-learner cuz I worked. I did the exams when
I felt I needed to and arranged appointments with Profs
at mutually convenient times, always well prep'd.
For labs, I'd start ~7:30am fresh and burn-out by 11:00,
and consolidate.
Not sure what alphabet I can hang off the end of my name.
For fun I'd assist the Profs in their personal research.
Regards
Ken

On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 16:48:05 -0700, "Ken S. Tucker"
wrote:

Bob Masta wrote:
On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 13:59:53 -0700, Jim Thompson
wrote:

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 16:48:33 -0400, Phil Hobbs
wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:
Check out these links....

http://tinyurl.com/7lfn7y8

http://tinyurl.com/c5hrbr

One wonders about what those rankings include. At a lot of the most
prestigious schools in the US, the famous professors can't be bothered
with undergraduates. Stanford was an amazing place to be a grad
student, though.

On the other hand, at UBC, where I went, and the University of Toronto,
and UConn (where my #2 daughter and my son go, respectively), the very
best faculty do a lot of teaching undergrads. My third year
electromagnetics class was taught by Prof. Bill Unruh, a leading light
in general relativity, and many of the others were also taught at a very
high level. One of my fourth-year honours astronomy classes was
scheduled to be taught in the prof's office, but there was one more
student than there were chairs, so we moved to a classroom--and that was
at a school with 30k students.

Both my son and my daughter had the dean of the faculty as their
undergraduate advisors. That sure doesn't grow on trees at the Ivies.

So the wisdom is to go to a big teaching school for a bachelor's degree,
and a top research school for graduate work, when possible.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs
At MIT, undergrad, I had all the "famous" profs. Sometimes that's not
so good. I had White of White & Woodson, "Electromechanical Energy
Conversion". He was a dud, never prepared and a poor instructor. We
petitioned and got him replaced... by Paul Penfield, then just a
graduate student, but an absolutely great instructor... and he went on
to great fame of his own. (I also tech'd for Woodson in his MHD lab,
so I got some very good first-hand advice from him :-)


I did my EE undergrad at General Motors Institute in the
late '60s. (It's now Kettering University.) Lots of
unknown profs, who didn't do research or publish. Went to
University of Michigan for grad school (bioengineering),
which was just the opposite. Guess which one had better
teaching?

I was shocked when I got to UM, because the teaching was (by
comparison) pretty much non-existent. Their theory was
apparently that you learn things better if you have to spend
a lot of time figuring them out for yourself. So they
assigned problems from the book and let you bang your head
against the wall, then the next day they explained how to
work them. (One of the worst offenders, by the way, was
Emmett Leith... brilliant scientist, co-inventer of laser
holography, but definitely not a teacher!)

I decided that the GMI profs had been hired to *teach*, not
to pursue research glory, and teach they did. They would
explain the general approaches to solving certain types of
problems, and work out examples *before* assigning the
homework. Yeah, baby hand-holding stuff, but it worked
better for me. YMMV.
Best regards,
Bob Masta

The subject is 'subjective', so I'm inclined to agree.
I was a self-learner cuz I worked. I did the exams when
I felt I needed to and arranged appointments with Profs
at mutually convenient times, always well prep'd.
For labs, I'd start ~7:30am fresh and burn-out by 11:00,
and consolidate.
Not sure what alphabet I can hang off the end of my name.
For fun I'd assist the Profs in their personal research.
Regards
Ken

I don't believe you are ever "taught", you either choose or not, to
"learn" what your environment presents to your view.

A new learning experience a day keeps the undertaker away ;-)

...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |

I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Jim Thompson wrote:
I don't believe you are ever "taught", you either choose or not, to
"learn" what your environment presents to your view.

Yeah, but learning from some teachers is easier than learning from others!

A new learning experience a day keeps the undertaker away ;-)

Indeed. Speaking of things that keep you going... how's the hip these
days? I happened to be talking to an orthopedist the other day, and he
was mentioning that there are so many new types of artificial hips
available now that, while they're all trying hard to outlast the
traditional ~10 year lifespan of the metal ball/plastic socket approach,
they haven't been around long enough to really know their longevity yet.

On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 17:09:43 -0700, Joel Koltner
wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:
I don't believe you are ever "taught", you either choose or not, to
"learn" what your environment presents to your view.

Yeah, but learning from some teachers is easier than learning from others!

A new learning experience a day keeps the undertaker away ;-)

Indeed. Speaking of things that keep you going... how's the hip these
days? I happened to be talking to an orthopedist the other day, and he
was mentioning that there are so many new types of artificial hips
available now that, while they're all trying hard to outlast the
traditional ~10 year lifespan of the metal ball/plastic socket approach,
they haven't been around long enough to really know their longevity yet.

I'm doing great. November 1 will be 5 years. They told me when they
did the replacement that it (Stryker) was good for at least 15 years.
Knock on wood!

...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |

I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

John Larkin wrote:

On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 17:57:53 -0500, John Fields
wrote:

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 18:14:55 -0700, John Larkin
wrote:

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 13:54:56 -0700, Joel Koltner
wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:
Check out these links....

http://tinyurl.com/7lfn7y8
http://tinyurl.com/c5hrbr

Were you hoping MIT would be #1 in both? :-)

Annoying that the second link ranks the hot categories in engineering
as, "computer, mechanical, civil." So much for electrical...

Hmm... ~$40k/year at MIT just for tuition... probably around $50k with
housing and books and what-not? $200k for a four-year degree? That's
just... incredible...

Too bad they don't rate schools on a basis along the lines of value of
education received per dollar of tuition.

Increasingly, grads of Harvard, Princeton, and MIT are working on Wall
Street. "Quants", they are called, using their math skills to skim
hundredths of a percent off the stock market.

---
How does that work, exactly?

I don't know the details, but there are companies that have set up
just next door to the NYSE and such, to shave milliseconds off their
transaction delays. They spot tiny differences in buy/sell
opportunities and trade stocks for literally seconds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_trading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_trading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-frequency_trading


This, done by hundreds of players, could have interesting
instabilities.

Over a decade ago I worked for a day trading company. They always
wanted the best, fastest and latest trading software to stay ahead of
the competition. The problem is the software developers sell to
everyone so you get a never ending race. Still, losing money is easier
than making money. Judging the state of mind of some traders I often
thought about removing the handles that open the windows.

Its not only about riding up and down small changes in share value but
also moving shares between various stock exchanges. Some shares are
traded on several exchanges so they need to be transferred from one
exchange to the other. Due to differences in demand the prices also
vary between one stock exchange and the other so a profit can be made.

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
--------------------------------------------------------------

On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 16:40:54 -0700, the renowned John Larkin
wrote:

On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 17:57:53 -0500, John Fields
wrote:

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 18:14:55 -0700, John Larkin
wrote:

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 13:54:56 -0700, Joel Koltner
wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:
Check out these links....

http://tinyurl.com/7lfn7y8
http://tinyurl.com/c5hrbr

Were you hoping MIT would be #1 in both? :-)

Annoying that the second link ranks the hot categories in engineering
as, "computer, mechanical, civil." So much for electrical...

Hmm... ~$40k/year at MIT just for tuition... probably around $50k with
housing and books and what-not? $200k for a four-year degree? That's
just... incredible...

Too bad they don't rate schools on a basis along the lines of value of
education received per dollar of tuition.

Increasingly, grads of Harvard, Princeton, and MIT are working on Wall
Street. "Quants", they are called, using their math skills to skim
hundredths of a percent off the stock market.

---
How does that work, exactly?

I don't know the details, but there are companies that have set up
just next door to the NYSE and such, to shave milliseconds off their
transaction delays. They spot tiny differences in buy/sell
opportunities and trade stocks for literally seconds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_trading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_trading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-frequency_trading


This, done by hundreds of players, could have interesting
instabilities.

This sounds like pure parasitism to me, and soaks up some of the best
math grads in the country. A small transaction tax would kill this
off.

A few weeks ago I was chatting with a lady who executed a project for
a major bank- they used a bunch of double-PhDs and such like to set up
kind of an arbitrage scheme with physical servers in various locations
and sophisticated software to do high-frequency trading (she explained
the underlying concept to me-- it is actually pretty straightforward
and the use of it long pre-dates computers)- the project cost many
millions of dollars.. it paid back 100% in just HOURS. There are
unbelievable amounts of money in this sort of thing.


Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany
--
"it's the network..." "The Journey is the reward"
Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog Info for designers: http://www.speff.com

Spehro Pefhany wrote:

On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 16:40:54 -0700, the renowned John Larkin
wrote:

On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 17:57:53 -0500, John Fields
wrote:

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 18:14:55 -0700, John Larkin
wrote:

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 13:54:56 -0700, Joel Koltner
wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:
Check out these links....

http://tinyurl.com/7lfn7y8
http://tinyurl.com/c5hrbr

Were you hoping MIT would be #1 in both? :-)

Annoying that the second link ranks the hot categories in engineering
as, "computer, mechanical, civil." So much for electrical...

Hmm... ~$40k/year at MIT just for tuition... probably around $50k with
housing and books and what-not? $200k for a four-year degree? That's
just... incredible...

Too bad they don't rate schools on a basis along the lines of value of
education received per dollar of tuition.

Increasingly, grads of Harvard, Princeton, and MIT are working on Wall
Street. "Quants", they are called, using their math skills to skim
hundredths of a percent off the stock market.

---
How does that work, exactly?

I don't know the details, but there are companies that have set up
just next door to the NYSE and such, to shave milliseconds off their
transaction delays. They spot tiny differences in buy/sell
opportunities and trade stocks for literally seconds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_trading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_trading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-frequency_trading


This, done by hundreds of players, could have interesting
instabilities.

This sounds like pure parasitism to me, and soaks up some of the best
math grads in the country. A small transaction tax would kill this
off.

A few weeks ago I was chatting with a lady who executed a project for
a major bank- they used a bunch of double-PhDs and such like to set up
kind of an arbitrage scheme with physical servers in various locations
and sophisticated software to do high-frequency trading (she explained
the underlying concept to me-- it is actually pretty straightforward
and the use of it long pre-dates computers)- the project cost many
millions of dollars.. it paid back 100% in just HOURS. There are
unbelievable amounts of money in this sort of thing.

Both to win and to lose. When they win, it's theirs. When they lose,
it's ours. What's not to like?

The late unpleasantness of 2008 wiped out more than the entire
historical profits of the entire banking industry, the world over.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs
--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
845-480-2058

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net

Jim Thompson wrote:
I'm doing great. November 1 will be 5 years. They told me when they
did the replacement that it (Stryker) was good for at least 15 years.
Knock on wood!

Cool -- glad to hear it's working out so well!

On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 16:40:54 -0700, John Larkin
wrote:

On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 17:57:53 -0500, John Fields
wrote:

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 18:14:55 -0700, John Larkin
wrote:

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 13:54:56 -0700, Joel Koltner
wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:
Check out these links....

http://tinyurl.com/7lfn7y8
http://tinyurl.com/c5hrbr

Were you hoping MIT would be #1 in both? :-)

Annoying that the second link ranks the hot categories in engineering
as, "computer, mechanical, civil." So much for electrical...

Hmm... ~$40k/year at MIT just for tuition... probably around $50k with
housing and books and what-not? $200k for a four-year degree? That's
just... incredible...

Too bad they don't rate schools on a basis along the lines of value of
education received per dollar of tuition.

Increasingly, grads of Harvard, Princeton, and MIT are working on Wall
Street. "Quants", they are called, using their math skills to skim
hundredths of a percent off the stock market.

---
How does that work, exactly?

I don't know the details, but there are companies that have set up
just next door to the NYSE and such, to shave milliseconds off their
transaction delays. They spot tiny differences in buy/sell
opportunities and trade stocks for literally seconds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_trading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_trading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-frequency_trading


This, done by hundreds of players, could have interesting
instabilities.

This sounds like pure parasitism to me, and soaks up some of the best
math grads in the country. A small transaction tax would kill this
off.


And this:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...BUUC1NSBPI.DTL

I'm surprised they didn't finance inventing fiber with a lower
refractive index.




--

John Larkin, President Highland Technology Inc
www.highlandtechnology.com jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com

Precision electronic instrumentation
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators
Custom timing and laser controllers
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links
VME analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer
Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators

John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 17:57:53 -0500, John Fields
wrote:

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 18:14:55 -0700, John Larkin
wrote:

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 13:54:56 -0700, Joel Koltner
wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:
Check out these links....

http://tinyurl.com/7lfn7y8 http://tinyurl.com/c5hrbr

Were you hoping MIT would be #1 in both? :-)

Annoying that the second link ranks the hot categories in
engineering as, "computer, mechanical, civil." So much for
electrical...

Hmm... ~$40k/year at MIT just for tuition... probably around
$50k with housing and books and what-not? $200k for a
four-year degree? That's just... incredible...

Too bad they don't rate schools on a basis along the lines of
value of education received per dollar of tuition.

Increasingly, grads of Harvard, Princeton, and MIT are working
on Wall Street. "Quants", they are called, using their math
skills to skim hundredths of a percent off the stock market.

--- How does that work, exactly?

I don't know the details, but there are companies that have set up
just next door to the NYSE and such, to shave milliseconds off their
transaction delays. They spot tiny differences in buy/sell
opportunities and trade stocks for literally seconds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_trading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_trading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-frequency_trading


This, done by hundreds of players, could have interesting
instabilities.


it depends. Let's suppose there exists an optimal sequence
of trades ( fair assumption? ). The question then becomes
whether an experienced trader and a programmer
together can make a "meta" that approximates
that sequence better than just the trader running "on
instinct".

Doing this would require the trader to be the one on the hook,
with the programmer being as ignorant as possible of the
larger view of the thing. The programmer is there to encode
the widget for the trader, nothing more.

SFAIK, markets still exist to produce an optimum
"transfer function" between buyers and sellers,
mainly by varying price. Trading is a win-win,
even if Black-Sholes & the Efficient Markets
Hypothesis cause misbehavior or don't hold over
some domains ( fat tails, Black Swans).

I'd think the biggest risk would be hubris - the trader/programmer
combo start thinking their poop don't stink. The market would then
pounce on that error, and they'd get badly hurt.


SFAIK, the autopsy on the Flash Crash from 2010 says it did not
cause anything more than a convergence on too-low prices for
a short period of time. IMO, I think there was a shortage of
liquidity, and that we've run on the ragged edged of liquidity
*in general* since about 1999. I think that's political, mainly.
Somebody took the short end of that and made out like a
bandit...

If you look at how firms managed cash in the 1950s and now, it's
breathtakingly different.

This sounds like pure parasitism to me, and soaks up some of the best
math grads in the country. A small transaction tax would kill this
off.



I don't think it's *particularly* parasitic. Math grads
gotta eat, too. Then again, I consider prices a public
good. I don't know of any reason that higher
transaction costs do anybody any good. If it turned out to be a good
revenue generator, then I'd be for the tax.

--
Les Cargill

On Sat, 31 Mar 2012 12:08:55 -0500, Les Cargill
wrote:

John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 17:57:53 -0500, John Fields
wrote:

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 18:14:55 -0700, John Larkin
wrote:

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 13:54:56 -0700, Joel Koltner
wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:
Check out these links....

http://tinyurl.com/7lfn7y8 http://tinyurl.com/c5hrbr

Were you hoping MIT would be #1 in both? :-)

Annoying that the second link ranks the hot categories in
engineering as, "computer, mechanical, civil." So much for
electrical...

Hmm... ~$40k/year at MIT just for tuition... probably around
$50k with housing and books and what-not? $200k for a
four-year degree? That's just... incredible...

Too bad they don't rate schools on a basis along the lines of
value of education received per dollar of tuition.

Increasingly, grads of Harvard, Princeton, and MIT are working
on Wall Street. "Quants", they are called, using their math
skills to skim hundredths of a percent off the stock market.

--- How does that work, exactly?

I don't know the details, but there are companies that have set up
just next door to the NYSE and such, to shave milliseconds off their
transaction delays. They spot tiny differences in buy/sell
opportunities and trade stocks for literally seconds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_trading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_trading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-frequency_trading


This, done by hundreds of players, could have interesting
instabilities.


it depends. Let's suppose there exists an optimal sequence
of trades ( fair assumption? ). The question then becomes
whether an experienced trader and a programmer
together can make a "meta" that approximates
that sequence better than just the trader running "on
instinct".

Doing this would require the trader to be the one on the hook,
with the programmer being as ignorant as possible of the
larger view of the thing. The programmer is there to encode
the widget for the trader, nothing more.

SFAIK, markets still exist to produce an optimum
"transfer function" between buyers and sellers,
mainly by varying price. Trading is a win-win,
even if Black-Sholes & the Efficient Markets
Hypothesis cause misbehavior or don't hold over
some domains ( fat tails, Black Swans).

I'd think the biggest risk would be hubris - the trader/programmer
combo start thinking their poop don't stink. The market would then
pounce on that error, and they'd get badly hurt.


SFAIK, the autopsy on the Flash Crash from 2010 says it did not
cause anything more than a convergence on too-low prices for
a short period of time. IMO, I think there was a shortage of
liquidity, and that we've run on the ragged edged of liquidity
*in general* since about 1999. I think that's political, mainly.
Somebody took the short end of that and made out like a
bandit...

If you look at how firms managed cash in the 1950s and now, it's
breathtakingly different.

This sounds like pure parasitism to me, and soaks up some of the best
math grads in the country. A small transaction tax would kill this
off.



I don't think it's *particularly* parasitic. Math grads
gotta eat, too.

Bank robbers and dictators gotta eat too. Math PhDs that do nothing
but skim other peoples money, and add no value to the economy, are
parasites.


Then again, I consider prices a public
good. I don't know of any reason that higher
transaction costs do anybody any good. If it turned out to be a good
revenue generator, then I'd be for the tax.

The advantage of a transaction tax is that it would get thousands of
people off Wall Street and looking for productive jobs. And it would
add a lot of stability to the economy.


--

John Larkin, President Highland Technology Inc
www.highlandtechnology.com jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com

Precision electronic instrumentation
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators
Custom timing and laser controllers
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links
VME analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer
Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators

John Larkin wrote:
On Sat, 31 Mar 2012 12:08:55 -0500, Les Cargill
wrote:

John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 17:57:53 -0500, John Fields
wrote:

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 18:14:55 -0700, John Larkin
wrote:

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 13:54:56 -0700, Joel Koltner
wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:
Check out these links....

http://tinyurl.com/7lfn7y8 http://tinyurl.com/c5hrbr

Were you hoping MIT would be #1 in both? :-)

Annoying that the second link ranks the hot categories in
engineering as, "computer, mechanical, civil." So much for
electrical...

Hmm... ~$40k/year at MIT just for tuition... probably around
$50k with housing and books and what-not? $200k for a
four-year degree? That's just... incredible...

Too bad they don't rate schools on a basis along the lines of
value of education received per dollar of tuition.

Increasingly, grads of Harvard, Princeton, and MIT are working
on Wall Street. "Quants", they are called, using their math
skills to skim hundredths of a percent off the stock market.

--- How does that work, exactly?

I don't know the details, but there are companies that have set up
just next door to the NYSE and such, to shave milliseconds off their
transaction delays. They spot tiny differences in buy/sell
opportunities and trade stocks for literally seconds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_trading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_trading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-frequency_trading


This, done by hundreds of players, could have interesting
instabilities.


it depends. Let's suppose there exists an optimal sequence
of trades ( fair assumption? ). The question then becomes
whether an experienced trader and a programmer
together can make a "meta" that approximates
that sequence better than just the trader running "on
instinct".

Doing this would require the trader to be the one on the hook,
with the programmer being as ignorant as possible of the
larger view of the thing. The programmer is there to encode
the widget for the trader, nothing more.

SFAIK, markets still exist to produce an optimum
"transfer function" between buyers and sellers,
mainly by varying price. Trading is a win-win,
even if Black-Sholes& the Efficient Markets
Hypothesis cause misbehavior or don't hold over
some domains ( fat tails, Black Swans).

I'd think the biggest risk would be hubris - the trader/programmer
combo start thinking their poop don't stink. The market would then
pounce on that error, and they'd get badly hurt.


SFAIK, the autopsy on the Flash Crash from 2010 says it did not
cause anything more than a convergence on too-low prices for
a short period of time. IMO, I think there was a shortage of
liquidity, and that we've run on the ragged edged of liquidity
*in general* since about 1999. I think that's political, mainly.
Somebody took the short end of that and made out like a
bandit...

If you look at how firms managed cash in the 1950s and now, it's
breathtakingly different.

This sounds like pure parasitism to me, and soaks up some of the best
math grads in the country. A small transaction tax would kill this
off.



I don't think it's *particularly* parasitic. Math grads
gotta eat, too.

Bank robbers and dictators gotta eat too. Math PhDs that do nothing
but skim other peoples money, and add no value to the economy,

And you know this how?

are
parasites.


Then again, I consider prices a public
good. I don't know of any reason that higher
transaction costs do anybody any good. If it turned out to be a good
revenue generator, then I'd be for the tax.

The advantage of a transaction tax is that it would get thousands of
people off Wall Street and looking for productive jobs.

We don't particularly have a productivity problem. Actual
productive capacity is very seldom the constraint these
days...

Financialization might be a problem, but if it is, it's
hard to unknot.


And it would
add a lot of stability to the economy.



Are you sure about that?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/03/24/the-flash-crash-does-not-justify-a-tobin-tax/

--
Les Cargill

On Sun, 01 Apr 2012 23:20:30 -0500, flipper wrote:

On Sat, 31 Mar 2012 11:58:44 -0700, John Larkin
wrote:

On Sat, 31 Mar 2012 12:08:55 -0500, Les Cargill
wrote:

John Larkin wrote:
On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 17:57:53 -0500, John Fields
wrote:

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 18:14:55 -0700, John Larkin
wrote:

On Wed, 28 Mar 2012 13:54:56 -0700, Joel Koltner
wrote:

Jim Thompson wrote:
Check out these links....

http://tinyurl.com/7lfn7y8 http://tinyurl.com/c5hrbr

Were you hoping MIT would be #1 in both? :-)

Annoying that the second link ranks the hot categories in
engineering as, "computer, mechanical, civil." So much for
electrical...

Hmm... ~$40k/year at MIT just for tuition... probably around
$50k with housing and books and what-not? $200k for a
four-year degree? That's just... incredible...

Too bad they don't rate schools on a basis along the lines of
value of education received per dollar of tuition.

Increasingly, grads of Harvard, Princeton, and MIT are working
on Wall Street. "Quants", they are called, using their math
skills to skim hundredths of a percent off the stock market.

--- How does that work, exactly?

I don't know the details, but there are companies that have set up
just next door to the NYSE and such, to shave milliseconds off their
transaction delays. They spot tiny differences in buy/sell
opportunities and trade stocks for literally seconds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_trading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_trading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-frequency_trading


This, done by hundreds of players, could have interesting
instabilities.


it depends. Let's suppose there exists an optimal sequence
of trades ( fair assumption? ). The question then becomes
whether an experienced trader and a programmer
together can make a "meta" that approximates
that sequence better than just the trader running "on
instinct".

Doing this would require the trader to be the one on the hook,
with the programmer being as ignorant as possible of the
larger view of the thing. The programmer is there to encode
the widget for the trader, nothing more.

SFAIK, markets still exist to produce an optimum
"transfer function" between buyers and sellers,
mainly by varying price. Trading is a win-win,
even if Black-Sholes & the Efficient Markets
Hypothesis cause misbehavior or don't hold over
some domains ( fat tails, Black Swans).

I'd think the biggest risk would be hubris - the trader/programmer
combo start thinking their poop don't stink. The market would then
pounce on that error, and they'd get badly hurt.


SFAIK, the autopsy on the Flash Crash from 2010 says it did not
cause anything more than a convergence on too-low prices for
a short period of time. IMO, I think there was a shortage of
liquidity, and that we've run on the ragged edged of liquidity
*in general* since about 1999. I think that's political, mainly.
Somebody took the short end of that and made out like a
bandit...

If you look at how firms managed cash in the 1950s and now, it's
breathtakingly different.

This sounds like pure parasitism to me, and soaks up some of the best
math grads in the country. A small transaction tax would kill this
off.



I don't think it's *particularly* parasitic. Math grads
gotta eat, too.

Bank robbers and dictators gotta eat too. Math PhDs that do nothing
but skim other peoples money,

Just how does one 'skim' a voluntary transaction and how did you
decide the money 'belongs' to 'other people'?

and add no value to the economy, are
parasites.

Someone obviously thinks it's of value or else they wouldn't pay them.

They do nothing but buy and sell in millisecond time frames. What they
make is a constant drain on the exconomy and on traditional investing,
where people bought shares in companies that produced something.




Then again, I consider prices a public
good. I don't know of any reason that higher
transaction costs do anybody any good. If it turned out to be a good
revenue generator, then I'd be for the tax.

The advantage of a transaction tax

Speaking of parasites...

is that it would get thousands of
people off Wall Street and looking for productive jobs. And it would
add a lot of stability to the economy.

I trust government 'economic engineering' even less than 'parasites'.

Government has got to tax something... it always has. Tax policies can
help the economy, or can hurt it. Tax policy steers behavior. The US
now has the highest corporate tax rate in the world, and lets money
brokers off very easy. So we have less manufacturing, less industry,
and more money brokers.

We should have tax policies that encourage true investment and job
creation. We have, mostly, the opposite.




--

John Larkin Highland Technology Inc
www.highlandtechnology.com jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com

Precision electronic instrumentation
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators
Custom timing and laser controllers
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links
VME analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer
Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators

John Larkin wrote:

On Thu, 29 Mar 2012 17:57:53 -0500, John Fields
wrote:

[snip]

How does that work, exactly?

I don't know the details, but there are companies that have set up
just next door to the NYSE and such, to shave milliseconds off their
transaction delays. They spot tiny differences in buy/sell
opportunities and trade stocks for literally seconds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_trading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_trading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-frequency_trading


This, done by hundreds of players, could have interesting
instabilities.

This sounds like pure parasitism to me, and soaks up some of the best
math grads in the country. A small transaction tax would kill this
off.



I could fix that with a couple of 300 baud modems. ;-)

--
Paul Hovnanian
------------------------------------------------------------------
Drugs may be the road to nowhere, but at least they're the scenic route!

John Larkin wrote:

[snip]

I don't know the details, but there are companies that have set up
just next door to the NYSE and such, to shave milliseconds off their
transaction delays. They spot tiny differences in buy/sell
opportunities and trade stocks for literally seconds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_trading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_trading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-frequency_trading

You forgot:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_running

Legally, there's a loophole. Since high frequency trades are initiated
blindly, it is claimed that there is no front running taking place.
However, most HFTs are cancelled before completion based on an advantage in
market information propagation. So its just another form of front running
that doesn't get them the cell next to Bernie Madoff.

--
Paul Hovnanian
------------------------------------------------------------------
Very funny, Scotty. Now beam down my pants!

On Wed, 04 Apr 2012 08:12:58 -0700, "Paul Hovnanian P.E."
wrote:

John Larkin wrote:

[snip]

I don't know the details, but there are companies that have set up
just next door to the NYSE and such, to shave milliseconds off their
transaction delays. They spot tiny differences in buy/sell
opportunities and trade stocks for literally seconds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_trading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_trading

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-frequency_trading

You forgot:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Front_running

Legally, there's a loophole. Since high frequency trades are initiated
blindly, it is claimed that there is no front running taking place.
However, most HFTs are cancelled before completion based on an advantage in
market information propagation. So its just another form of front running
that doesn't get them the cell next to Bernie Madoff.

Gosh, that's like having an illegal time machine.

All this could be fixed with some simple regulations and taxes. But
lawyers and Wall Street ("Government Sachs") make the rules.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology Inc
www.highlandtechnology.com jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com

Precision electronic instrumentation
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators
Custom timing and laser controllers
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links
VME analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer
Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators