Here is a nice way to look at error measures … Link : What Is the Error if the Probability of Rain Is .5 and It Rains?

Via NY Times ( For Today’s Graduate, Just One Word: Statistics) “The key is to let computers do what they are good at, which is trawling these massive data sets for something that is mathematically odd,” said Daniel Gruhl, an I.B.M. researcher whose recent work includes mining medical data to improve treatment. “And that makes it easier for humans to do what they are good at — explain those anomalies.”

The man who conforms never transforms

Thanks to Sanjiv Sir’s forward, this note on financial models is one of my best reads till date, on the crucial differences between a Physics based Model and a Financial Model. Why should a financial modeler be extra cautious in whatever he/she does and not carried out away by math jazz is something that is well brought out by the paper by Andrew Lo. _If Tycho, Kepler, Galileo and Newton had been confronted with such “quasi-periodic” data for the cyclical paths of the planets, it may have taken centuries, not years, of observational data for them to arrive at the same level of understanding of planetary motion that we have today.

Applied math is too important to be left to pure math types - Paul Samuelson