New Year's Resolutions

What have I learnt in 2013 and what do I hope to achieve in 2014? This time last year I was suffering from persistent pain just under my rib...

Is finance guided by good science or convincing magic?

Noah Smith posted a piece on  "Freshwater vs. Saltwater" divides macro, but not finance .  As a mathematician I did not really und...

Language barriers in understanding risk and uncertainty

Arthur Charpentier and Dave Giles  reminded me of the disagreement over the terms random and chance variable. "random variable" vs...

The rational man, the average man and the replacement of deliberation by will

A few weeks ago I changed my broadband supplier. Things were a bit ropey the first weekend and my son had problems watching Lego Star Wars v...

What Borgen reveals to me about the philosophy of science

I watched episode two of the third series of Borgen after spending some time thinking about Viviana Zelizer's Economic Lives and the ...

Are bankers wasting a good crisis

This post is concerned whether banking culture will change as a consequence of recent financial crises/scandals and offers some material tha...