When you hear something, you forget it.
When you see something, you remember it.
But not until you do something will you understand it.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Pecking Order of Academics
- Psychologist wants to be social scientist.
- Social scientist wants to be economist.
- Economist wants to be chemist.
- Chemist wants to be physicist.
- Physicist wants to be mathematician.
- Mathematician wants to be God.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
Freedom
"All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual toward freedom."
–Albert Einstein
–Albert Einstein
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Flaws of Stock Chart Reading (Stock Technical Analysis)
Quoted from the book "Security Analysis" (1951, third version) by Benjamin Graham, et al. On page 653, he remarked about the Chart Reading (Market Analysis):
... Security analysis and market analysis are alike, therefore, in the fact that they deal with data that are not conclusive as to the future. The difference, as we shall point out, is that the security analyst can protect himself by a margin of safety that is denied to the market analyst. [margin of safety refers to buying way below the intrinsic business value of the stock]
.. human impatience plus the exigencies of the chart reader's profession impel him to draw more frequent conclusions from less convincing data.
... The stock speculator does suffer, in fact, from a well-nigh incurable ailment. The cure he seeks, however, is not abstinence from speculation but profits. Despite all experience , he persuades himself that these can be made and retained; he grasps greedily and uncritically at every plausible means to this end.
The plausibility of chart reading, in our opinion, derives largely from its insistence on the sound gambling maxim that losses should be cut short and profits allowed to run. ... But in this conclusion there lurks a double fallacy. Many players at roulette follow a similar system, which limits their losses at any one session and permits them at times to realize a substantial gain. But in the end they always find the aggregate of small losses exceeds the few large profits. (This must be so, since the mathematical odds against them are inexorable over a period of time). The same is true of the stock trader, who will find that the expense of trading weights the dice heavily against him.
...
... Security analysis and market analysis are alike, therefore, in the fact that they deal with data that are not conclusive as to the future. The difference, as we shall point out, is that the security analyst can protect himself by a margin of safety that is denied to the market analyst. [margin of safety refers to buying way below the intrinsic business value of the stock]
.. human impatience plus the exigencies of the chart reader's profession impel him to draw more frequent conclusions from less convincing data.
... The stock speculator does suffer, in fact, from a well-nigh incurable ailment. The cure he seeks, however, is not abstinence from speculation but profits. Despite all experience , he persuades himself that these can be made and retained; he grasps greedily and uncritically at every plausible means to this end.
The plausibility of chart reading, in our opinion, derives largely from its insistence on the sound gambling maxim that losses should be cut short and profits allowed to run. ... But in this conclusion there lurks a double fallacy. Many players at roulette follow a similar system, which limits their losses at any one session and permits them at times to realize a substantial gain. But in the end they always find the aggregate of small losses exceeds the few large profits. (This must be so, since the mathematical odds against them are inexorable over a period of time). The same is true of the stock trader, who will find that the expense of trading weights the dice heavily against him.
...
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Excepts from the Book "A new kind of science" by Stephen Wolfram
In the end the Principle of Computational Equivalence encapsulates both the ultimate power and the ultimate weakness of science. For it implies that all the wonders of our universe can in effect be captured by simple rules, yet it shows that there can be no way to know all the consequences of these rules, except in effect just to watch and see how they unfold.
Free Will: What makes us think there is freedom in what a system does? In practice the main criterion seems to be that we cannot readily make predictions about the behavior of the system. It seems likely that the individual steps in each train of thought follow quite definite underlying rules. And the crucial point is then that I suspect that the computation performed by applying these rule is often sophisticated enough to be computationally irreducible -- with the result that it must intrinsically produce behavior that seems to us free of obvious laws.
Second Law of Thermodynamics: No reasonable experiment can ever involve setting up the kind of initial conditions that will lead to decreases in randomness, and that therefore all practical experiments will tend to show only increases in randomness. But it may not be universally valid, some celluar automata can exhibit self organization.
Ultimate mode of universe: I strongly suspect that the vast majority of physical laws discovered so far are not truly fundamental, but are instead merely emergent features of the large-scale behavior of some ultimate underlying rule. Could it be that underneath all the complex phenomena we see in physics there lies some simple program which , if run long enough, would reproduce our universe in every detail?
Data compression: all the compression methods can be thought of as corresponding to fairly simple programs.
Cryptography: using celluar automaton to generate encryption key.
Free Will: What makes us think there is freedom in what a system does? In practice the main criterion seems to be that we cannot readily make predictions about the behavior of the system. It seems likely that the individual steps in each train of thought follow quite definite underlying rules. And the crucial point is then that I suspect that the computation performed by applying these rule is often sophisticated enough to be computationally irreducible -- with the result that it must intrinsically produce behavior that seems to us free of obvious laws.
Second Law of Thermodynamics: No reasonable experiment can ever involve setting up the kind of initial conditions that will lead to decreases in randomness, and that therefore all practical experiments will tend to show only increases in randomness. But it may not be universally valid, some celluar automata can exhibit self organization.
Ultimate mode of universe: I strongly suspect that the vast majority of physical laws discovered so far are not truly fundamental, but are instead merely emergent features of the large-scale behavior of some ultimate underlying rule. Could it be that underneath all the complex phenomena we see in physics there lies some simple program which , if run long enough, would reproduce our universe in every detail?
Data compression: all the compression methods can be thought of as corresponding to fairly simple programs.
Cryptography: using celluar automaton to generate encryption key.
Quotes from An Ancient Book
<<长短经>>
养失而泰，乐失而淫，礼失而彩，教失而伪。
察于刀笔之迹者，既不知理乱之本；
习于行阵之事者，既不知庙胜之权。
儒以文乱法，侠以武犯禁。
兵胜于外，义强于内。
欲不可纵，志不可满。
式于政，不式于勇；
式于廊庙之内，不式于四境之外。
养失而泰，乐失而淫，礼失而彩，教失而伪。
察于刀笔之迹者，既不知理乱之本；
习于行阵之事者，既不知庙胜之权。
儒以文乱法，侠以武犯禁。
兵胜于外，义强于内。
欲不可纵，志不可满。
式于政，不式于勇；
式于廊庙之内，不式于四境之外。
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Most Favorite Quotes
The scientist does not study nature because it is useful; he studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing, and if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living. - Henri Poincaré
Live with your century, but don't be its creature. - Friedrich von Schiller
The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, And miles to go before I sleep, And miles to go before I sleep. - Robert Frost
I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no "brief candle" to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it over to future generations. - George Bernard Shaw
The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart. -Helen Adams Keller
Work like you don't need the money. Love like you've never been hurt. Dance like nobody is watching. Sing like nobody is listening. Live like it's Heaven on Earth. -author unknown-
“There is only one liberty, to come to terms with death, thereafter anything is possible.”
― Albert Camus
One is only happy in proportion as he makes others feel happy and only useful as he contributes his influences for the finer callings in life.
— Milton S. Hershey
“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
― Albert Einstein
Be the change you wish to see in the world.
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