My Life As A Computational Maths Marketer Changes

This is my last post here. It was so enjoyable.

I am old enough to give my uni software plus in younger hands - Michael Aichinger - and I am young enough to launch a new business: EXNeR Advice. I will continue writing about computational maths there.

Exploit the wu-wei paradox

I am still passionate about transforming future technologies into margins. I plan to work less, and do more - hoping the wu-wei principle will help me: let the complex stream work for me.

When you start your own business, it's just you and your ideas. Then you get clients and they start shaping you and that ideas …. When I decided for Wolfram technologies - and his was very early - things changed. There was already a complex flow.

A language to program everything

The most exciting thing to me as former algebraist, former factory automator (maker of domain-specific programing systems for complex manufacturing plants): Wolfram Language - the language to program everything. It's amazing.

What always struck me when developing technology businesses -  and still does:

The fear of regret

When I made my first tumbling steps into computing, in the mid 70s, nearly everybody agreed: "No one ever has got fired for buying IBM".  A wonderful example of understanding "defensive decision making". This is not in search of the optimal risk ... it is loss aversion. Choose those, being good in not being bad?!

The eager sellers and stony buyers trap

Innovations fail because clients irrationally overvalue what hey use and makers irrationally overvalue what they offer. The irrationality factor can go up to 10.

Market efficiency hypothesis is a myth

Markets seem to be adaptive, but do we really have an idea why business works as it does?
We know from financial markets that the market efficiency hypothesis is not true. If it was, it was predictable. It is, partially, but only on the long run (often mean reverting). Rational buyers would ask for ugly cars.

Big data is a big joke

The major concern is not about the access to such data and how to slice and dice them, but the nature of the problem. It is all about high-dimension-low-number-of-samples and that in those sets large deviations are more attributable to noise than to insight. Life in the market data salt mines is hard. But media, analysts, clients will read the results as given …

The trust vs attention dance

Both are scarce elements in our businesses. Trust is fragile and attention is limited. If clients want constant attention to trust us, we might become a problem. And in fact we find trusted brands that are not at top of an attention list. A misunderstood brand promise can kill businesses.

There are tactics to avoid falling into his kind of traps. One, I use, might be seen as arrogant: No, UnRisk is not for "You"

I hope, we stay in touch.

Picture from sehfelder

The Goats, Wolves and Lions Puzzle and a Wolfram Language Program to Solve It Most Elegantly

The puzzle: Goats, Wolves and Lions

3 ways to solve it

Solving it in a functional programming style: Functional Goats, Wolves and Lions

in the Wolfram Language - with some principles avoiding hidden traps.

New Wolfram Pages - New Platforms - New Business Principles

Wolfram Research has redesigned an reorganized their web pages.

It is now even more emphasizing on packages motivated by usage and technologies, rather than technologies alone.

Pages that show new business principles

I see them through the lens of a developer and marketer. They are great. They describe perfectly the re-packaging of unprecedented technologies into new platforms (products) for solutions.

As developer we have taken big advantages of the enormous productive Wolfram Language and Wolfram Engine, extended it into the Universe of derivative and risk analytics - UnRisk Financial Language and UnRisk Engine (UnRisk-Q the programming power behind UnRisk).

About its benefits: A good financial language has, freedom, knowledge and brings documents to life.

Without this unparalleled productive platform, we were unable to do with less than two dozens of people what may need hundred people if utilizing any other.

When we decided to unleash this technology, we knew we will serve competitors of our UnRisk FACTORY solutions. This is the reason, why this is not a mistake.

European Wolfram Technology Conference 2014 is Announced

The EWTC 2014 is announced. It was really great 2013. We had the privilege to collect four talks - including client presentations of groundbreaking projects: the UnRisk Financial Language atop the Wolfram language, machine learning framework, the PlateMod factory for the high performance simulation of rolling processes and tailor-made C Code Generation with the SymbolicC package,

EWTC 2014 will be a highlight for us also this year.

This year we will submit a talk about the valuation of a famous swap.  A Swap between "the City" and "the Bank"  that has attracted some attention. It landed at the court.

The talk will point out that scenario analytics is a must and how UnRisk and Mathematica help to explain complex concepts to non experts, whilst at the same time make the proper valuations and risk analytics for risk experts.

We are looking forward again to meeting those who make Mathematica, other solution and add on developers and users.

Intel Edison and Wolfram Language

Today, Wolfram announced to bring Wolfram Language to the New Intel SD-Card-Sized Computer.

IMO, this is not just an announcement of a technology development step - it needs to be seen in a wider context - the future of contextual technologies (our extra senses).

The announcement coincides with the Wolfram Connected Devices Project announcement.

And this seems to me is two-sided: to model connected devices (networked in the internet of things) in Wolfram Language and decentralize computational knowledge represented in Wolfram Language and Mathematica to mobile devices.

All together integrated into a "computational knowledge cloud"?

It is amazing - 25 years ago I met Mathematica …. falsely categorized as computer algebra system.
Now I am bursting with ideas how to exploit this unique technology in integrated computational finance, process and manufacturing management, … (fields where I know the requirements quite well).

I have pointed out a few non technical thoughts here (before I read the announcements).

Something Very Big Is Coming - Wolfram CLOUD

In An Open Letter to Mathematica I have pointed out how and why Mathematica has monopolized my business. The language aspect was the key. This was 2012, and I wrote " … I look forward to your new radical innovations that will enable us to drive the innovation spiral even faster"

Here we are, in late 2013. The UnRisk Financial Language is a financial language atop Wolfram Language. Quants will create their own domain specific languages (say, a model validation language) atop the UnRisk language and so on. This is how it works: If You are a Quant Developer, You can build your Risk Management Platform Quickly.

2006 we have created the UnRiskverse - its algorithms, the pricing and calibration engines, extend Mathematica's into the world of complex derivatives, portfolios, scenarios, VaRs, expected shortfalls, CVA/DVA/FVAs, … They enable us to implement most of UnRisk in UnRisk. Each UnRisk language programmer has the full Mathematica available (all language constructs, algorithms, data …)

With the announcement Something Very Big is Coming, I see the innovation spiral accelerating. It is amazing. I am really excited. Dance With Symbols influenced my thinking from the very beginning - fortunately.

Even a program is a symbol. That makes the idea of symbolic programming. The algorithms are responsible for the operational semantics. Together it becomes a knowledge-based language,

I am really looking forward to Wolfram CLOUD.

Mathematicians Write Great Comedy

This book has been published recently: The Simpsons and Their Mathematical Secrets.

Discovering that Simpson contains many jokes related to maths? No, several of the writers have a background in mathematics, physics or computer science.

And why do writers with that background choose cartoons? Maybe it has to do with concise, incisive ...? I want to go back to Marshall McLuhan's definition of "cool media": media requiring more active participation of the user, abstract patterning and simultaneous comprehension of all parts. Cartoons as example.

And this is what the language of mathematics does. It expresses something that stimulates thinking - usually you wrap your own mathematical mind around. A logic expression on the object mathematics level need a semantic function into a model level - to bring it to live, talk about it, find examples, find new abstractions ... This is one essence of maths. The other is the operational semantics - the calculations.

At the other hand, how to find stories well worth reading - and thinking? Use maths as language - keep to it until you know the whole plot - translate into English - illustrate - remove the mathematics?

This is why I liked reading Red-blooded Risk, Aaron Brown: written in a rigorous style with no equations, contains illustrations and graphic narrative.

Mathematicians are good writers, and readers? Especially if the media is cool.