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My Life as a Quant: Reflections on Physics and Finance Paperback – January 11, 2016
Purchase options and add-ons
- Print length304 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherWiley
- Publication dateJanuary 11, 2016
- Dimensions6 x 0.9 x 9 inches
- ISBN-100470192739
- ISBN-13978-0470192733
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"That sense of being an intruder in outlaw territory lends an intriguing mood to Derman's My Life As a Quant, a literate and entertaining memoir." -Business Week
"engaging" --(CFO Europe, October 2005)
"Not only a delightful memoir, but one full of information, both about people and their enterprise. I never thought that I would be interested in quantitative financial analysis, but reading this book has been a fascinating education." –Jeremy Bernstein, author of Oppenheimer: Portrait of an Enigma
"This wonderful autobiography takes place in that special time when scientists discovered Wall Street and Wall Street discovered them. It is elegantly written by a gifted observer who was a pioneering member of the new profession of financial engineering, with an evident affection both for finance as a science and for the scientists who practice it. Derman’s portrait of how the academics brought their new financial science to the world of business and forever changed it and, especially, his descriptions of the late and extraordinary genius Fischer Black who became his mentor, reveal a surprising humanity where it might be least expected. Who should read this book? Anyone with a serious interest in finance and everyone who simply wants to enjoy a good read."–Stephen Ross, Franco Modigliani Professor of Finance and Economics, Sloan School, MIT
From the Inside Flap
My Life as a Quant, by Emanuel Derman is, indeed, a perfect memoir, as Derman, a South African-born physicist turned financial engineer, is a perfect memoirist. --Grant's Interest Rate Observer
That sense of being an intruder in outlaw territory lends an intriguing mood to Derman's My Life as a Quant, a literate and entertaining memoir.--BusinessWeek
Derman's memoir of his transition from mathematical physicist to expert finance whiz at Goldman Sachs and Salomon Brothers reads like a novel, but tells a lot about brains applied to making money grow.--Paul A. Samuelson, MIT, Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences, 1970
Elegantly written by a gifted observer who was a pioneering member of the new profession of financial engineering with an evident affection both for finance as a science and for the scientists who practice it. Derman's portrait of how the academics brought their new financial science to the world of business and his descriptions of the late and extraordinary genius Fischer Black who became his mentor, reveal a surprising humanity where it might be least expected.--Stephen Ross, Franco Modigliani Professor of Finance and Economics, Sloan School, MIT
a deep and elegant exploration by a thinker who moved from the hardest of all sciences (physics) to the softest of the soft (finance). Derman is a different class of thinker... I know of no other book that bridges the two cultures.--Nassim Taleb, author of The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness
From the Back Cover
"My Life as a Quant, by Emanuel Derman is, indeed, a perfect memoir, as Derman, a South African–born physicist turned financial engineer, is a perfect memoirist." --Grant's Interest Rate Observer
"That sense of being an intruder in outlaw territory lends an intriguing mood to Derman's My Life as a Quant, a literate and entertaining memoir."--BusinessWeek
"Derman's memoir of his transition from mathematical physicist to expert finance whiz at Goldman Sachs and Salomon Brothers reads like a novel, but tells a lot about brains applied to making money grow."--Paul A. Samuelson, MIT, Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences, 1970
"Elegantly written by a gifted observer who was a pioneering member of the new profession of financial engineering with an evident affection both for finance as a science and for the scientists who practice it. Derman's portrait of how the academics brought their new financial science to the world of business and his descriptions of the late and extraordinary genius Fischer Black who became his mentor, reveal a surprising humanity where it might be least expected."--Stephen Ross, Franco Modigliani Professor of Finance and Economics, Sloan School, MIT
" a deep and elegant exploration by a thinker who moved from the hardest of all sciences (physics) to the softest of the soft (finance). Derman is a different class of thinker... I know of no other book that bridges the two cultures."--Nassim Taleb, author of The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Wiley; 1st edition (January 11, 2016)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 304 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0470192739
- ISBN-13 : 978-0470192733
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 0.9 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #200,128 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #500 in Scientist Biographies
- #715 in Biographies of Business & Industrial Professionals
- #6,534 in Memoirs (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
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EMANUEL DERMAN is Professor of Practice Emeritus at Columbia University, where he previously directed their program in financial engineering. He is the author of My Life As A Quant, one of Business Week's top ten books of the year, in which he introduced the quant world to a wide audience, and Models.Behaving.Badly: Why Confusing Illusion with Reality Can Lead to Disasters,On Wall Street and in Life. His textbook, with Michael Miller, is The Volatility Smile.
His latest book is Brief Hours and Weeks: My Life as a Capetonian, a memoir of youth in a tightly knit, off-the-boat, first-generation Polish-Jewish community in Cape Town in the late 1940s, 50s, and 60s, bringing to life a now lost world.
He was born in South Africa but has lived most of his professional life in Manhattan in New York City, where he has made contributions to several fields. He started out as a theoretical physicist, doing research on unified theories of elementary particle interactions. At AT&T Bell Laboratories in the 1980s he developed programming languages for business modeling. From 1985 to 2002 he worked on Wall Street, running quantitative strategies research groups in fixed income, equities and risk management, and was appointed a managing director at Goldman Sachs & Co. in 1997. The financial models he developed there, the Black-Derman-Toy interest rate model and the Derman-Kani local volatility model, have become widely used industry standards.
In his 1996 article Model Risk Derman pointed out the dangers that inevitably accompany the use of models, a theme he developed in My Life as a Quant. Among his awards and honors, he was named the SunGard/IAFE Financial Engineer of the Year in 2000. He has a PhD in theoretical physics from Columbia University and is the author of numerous articles in elementary particle physics, computer science, and finance.
Customer reviews
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Learn more how customers reviews work on AmazonCustomers say
Customers find the book informative and entertaining. They describe it as a great, multifaceted read for anyone interested in physics and finance. The writing quality is described as well-written and easy to read. Readers appreciate the autobiography format with its descriptive narrative and relaxed style. The visual style is praised as elegant and colorful. The humor is also appreciated, with subtle yet succinct humor.
AI-generated from the text of customer reviews
Customers find the book informative and entertaining. They appreciate the insights into quants' work, academic life, and financial markets. The author provides an accessible explanation of the mechanics of quantitative analysis.
"...to gain insight not only into how it is to live, study, and work in academia, but also in the financial world...." Read more
"...Standouts to me were his intuitive descriptions of his BDT model and his local volatility model for options pricing, which I found thrillingly lucid...." Read more
"...And in the end I think I DID get some quite valuable insight on the financial markets, insight that I expect will help me in navigating that tricky..." Read more
"This is an autobiography of a theoretical physicist who made the transition to Wall Street financial modeler...." Read more
Customers find the book engaging and informative. They say it's a worthwhile read for anyone interested in physics and finance. The story of a physicist-turned-quant is entertaining and well-written. Readers also mention the book provides useful insights into various disciplines like literature, philosophy, art, and culture.
"...That he could ultimately find interesting and satisfying work, raise a family, and retire comfortably from the corporate grind despite so many..." Read more
"...I'm pretty sure I picked up some valuable wisdom whilst enjoying the reading greatly...." Read more
"...Also has rare insight as a quant from bonds as well as stock world. Great read .." Read more
"...; second, Derman writes surprisingly graceful and elegant prose, worth reading even if you're not interested in finance...." Read more
Customers enjoy the book's entertaining stories and anecdotes. They find the stories familiar, especially those about the author's progression from grad student to post-doc to Wall Street quant.
"...who have been through graduate work in physics, his stories and anecdotes are very familiar, especially those that detail the personalities of some..." Read more
"...This part of the book is stimulating and one gets a feeling for the issues and challenges...." Read more
"...text, the reader is provided a number of thought provoking and entertaining stories...." Read more
"...The software was functional, but not a great experience; there are few customization options and an irritating lack of actual page numbers, for..." Read more
Customers find the book's writing quality good. They say it's well-written and easy to read. The author's writing skills are impressive, and the language is plain and digestible. Readers appreciate the chapter organization that makes it easier to read the book gradually. However, some feel the text has a slow pace, like an old professor or grandpa talking. Overall, readers find the prose and delivery of the book good.
"...Let's just say it up front: the guy can write...way better than most, and way better than I really expected of a physicist...." Read more
"...Personally, this method of chapter organization made it easier to read the book gradually; if I needed to come to a stopping point for an extended..." Read more
"...of the beginnings of financial engineering; second, Derman writes surprisingly graceful and elegant prose, worth reading even if you're not..." Read more
"...Prose and delivery is good. His writing skills as a physicist turned quant is impressive. There are not many dull sections in the book...." Read more
Customers find the autobiography informative and entertaining. They appreciate the author's descriptive narrative and relaxed style. The book covers more than physics, making it human and approachable.
"...n't know. Anyway, this book is more than physics, it' s partly the guy's life, very poignant, and downright touching at times..." Read more
"...These touches make him human and approachable and can offer lessons at least as important as the career advice he gives...." Read more
"This a half biography, half industry history book about Dr. Derman and quantitative finance as practiced by Wall Street firms, respectively...." Read more
"I wholeheartedly agree with other reviewers who found this a fascinating autobiography with thought-provoking essays on physics, finance and..." Read more
Customers appreciate the book's visual style. They find it interesting, with a colorful illustration of an alternate career in finance. The prose is elegant and easy to understand. The book captures the grad school and postdoc experience well with its plain yet digestible language. Readers also mention the humor is subtle and succinct.
"...And there was plenty of humor in the book as well, subtle and succinct, and in just the right places to make it all so relatable...." Read more
"...engineering; second, Derman writes surprisingly graceful and elegant prose, worth reading even if you're not interested in finance...." Read more
"...stuffed with interesting tidbits of physics, literature, philosophy, art, and culture -- and not a finance book...." Read more
"...This book is the best illustration I know of that recipe." Read more
Customers enjoy the book's humor. They find it witty, funny, and entertaining.
"...And there was plenty of humor in the book as well, subtle and succinct, and in just the right places to make it all so relatable...." Read more
"...it was filled with a man's philosophical reflections on life, witty poetic style, and deep impressive intellectual power...." Read more
"...that brainpower can be lucrative on Wall Street while fostering abstruse humor...." Read more
"Emmanuel Derman is witty, funny, and very descriptive in his narrative...." Read more
Reviews with images
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Biographical and informative
Top reviews from the United States
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- Reviewed in the United States on August 4, 2006It is very uncommon for scientists to be revealing of their personal lives, and even more rare for them to make written commentary on the people they have interacted with over the span of their careers or even a portion thereof. The author of this book, who began his career as a physicist and then chose to be a financial engineer, is thus a statistical outlier in this regard. His transparency has allowed the reader to gain insight not only into how it is to live, study, and work in academia, but also in the financial world. All personal life histories are subjected to random perturbations, to events and people that are unplanned and unexpected, but as this book clearly shows, with pertinacity, with determination, one can smooth out even the strongest of these perturbations, and trace out a world line that is personally satisfying and dignified.
A reader should not conclude from the title of the book that the author concentrates solely on his experiences as a "quant" on Wall Street. He also details his experiences as a graduate student at Columbia University and as such gives inspiring physics graduate students a look at life at a major research institution. For those who have been through graduate work in physics, his stories and anecdotes are very familiar, especially those that detail the personalities of some of physics professors which interestingly enough, seem to have a very small variance. It would be unfair to say that arrogance and envy are the predominant emotions among physics professors, since there has been no reliable scientific studies that would indicate this is the case, but there is such a plethora of rumors and innuendo to that conclusion that many graduate physics departments are not obtaining the students that they need. This is indeed a shame, given the inherent fascinations of both theoretical and applied physics that dissuaded young people will not get to experience.
There are more than just anecdotes in the book, for the author gives opinions on the nature of discovery in physics and the similarities and differences with discovery in computational and theoretical finance. Interestingly, he states that the discovery of physical laws was partly the result of what he calls "deep intuition" and also "pure thought." The author does not elaborate on what he means by these terms, no doubt because he does not want to engage in philosophical meanderings, but his claims would raise an eyebrow to those readers who have a strong background in the history of science. A reading of the history of discovery in physics will reveal a quite different story, namely that the present understanding and formulation of physical laws came about after many false leads and blind allies over centuries of effort. It would therefore be unfair to impute some magical sense of intuition or thought patterns to Newton, Maxwell, and Einstein. Their discoveries certainly came about as the result of "hard thinking" as the author believes, but they were also dependent on the observations, extrapolations, technological expertise, and failed hypotheses of many who came before them. Far from being step functions of history that made radical breaks with the past, these discoveries were instead an alternating sum of the work of many dedicated individuals, whose identities and institutional affiliations can be found out if one takes the time and effort.
Wall Street though was apparently impressed enough about the abilities of physicists to begin hiring them in the 1980's to do quantitative finance. Choosing physicists instead of mathematicians or engineers does make sense if one believes that physicists have both the "common sense" and mathematical expertise needed to build models of the financial markets and of various financial instruments, such as fixed income products and credit swaps. The participation of physicists in the field of financial engineering continues to this day, and it would be justified to believe that their hiring has been a wise choice, in spite of some of debacles widely reported in the press over the last two decades (most of the reporting being inaccurate and misleading if one examines the historical facts). The author does not want to call quantitative finance a "science" but he alludes to the fact that it has resulted in a few fields springing up in recent years, with "econophysics" being one of these.
The author's account of life at the physics department in Columbia in the 1960's is fascinating and has parallels in other departments throughout the United States, if not the entire world. The creativity and dynamism in these departments is to be contrasted with the envy and infighting, the latter of which can be extremely counterproductive to those students who experience it (and are afraid of speaking up against it). In particular the author spends a lot of time discussing the personality of T.D. Lee, a high-energy physicist who shared with Chen-Ning Yang a Nobel Prize in physics for their discovery of parity violation in the weak interaction. When reading the author's account, one is amazed by the immaturity and childishness exhibited by T.D. Lee, especially his attempts to humiliate invited seminar speakers, all with the intent it seems of gaining attention, and not to clarify scientifically the issues at hand. It would seem as though Lee was aware that the focus he obtained when winning the Nobel is short-lived, that glory is only fleeting, and he was going to take every step, no matter how irrational, to insure that he was kept under the bright lights of theatre. Even more shocking is to read that Yang and Lee actually split up and no longer communicated with each other a short time after receiving their Nobel. It would seem that the sharing of fame is an anathema to them. But left out of the author's discussion is any mention of how Yang and Lee arrived at their ideas. Did they arise solely because of discussions between the two of them, or did they arise from ruminations with colleagues or graduate students? And in his focus on T.D. Lee the author downplays his own intellectual status and importance relative to him. There is no question that T.D. Lee has done outstanding work, but could he have also done brilliant work in financial engineering of the type that the author and many others did? One could make a strong argument, based on both practical needs and intellectual ingenuity, that the contributions to quantitative finance that the author made are vastly more important than what T.D. Lee made to physics. Derivatives trading now amounts to over 200 trillion dollars, and the financial instruments that have been developed by the author and others have assisted the financial needs of hundreds of millions of people. The intellectual horsepower required, along with the needed background in frequently difficult and abtruse mathematics, certainly ranks quantitative finance as being one of the most challenging fields to be in, right up there with physics, and in many cases surpassing it.
- Reviewed in the United States on May 4, 2011Having planned to read this book since sometime as an undergraduate five or more years ago, I finally ordered this book after hearing Emmanuel Derman give a talk at the University of Chicago. As a chemistry graduate student faced with the bleak prospects of an academic's life and considering the jump to a career in mathematical finance, this book was both comforting and thought-provoking.
As a young person, it was comforting to hear Derman's well-told picaresque story about nine jobs in three careers after seven years of grad school. That he could ultimately find interesting and satisfying work, raise a family, and retire comfortably from the corporate grind despite so many missteps throughout his twenties and thirties is a nice thing to hear in a labor market that appears to give so few second chances. (Of course it helps that he is so technically gifted.) Indeed, Derman's stories about the people and places that employed him through academic physics, industrial research, and quantitative finance comprise the bulk of the book and are vividly engaging. Of course, a big draw of this book are his firsthand accounts of giants like TD Lee and Fischer Black, and these don't disappoint. Derman is a keen and often insightfully introspective observer, and I feel like I learned much about work life from his reflections and descriptions of his colleagues, bosses, and work cultures. His descriptions of life as a physicist resembled an addiction crossed with the ignorant insularity of the academy; they helped to explain how, already battered by many years of the grueling and competitive life of a physics postdoc, he would leave a wife and young child for an assistant professor job half a country away. This is recounted so poignantly that one even hopes to learn from his mistakes.
Derman's explanations of his technical work were educational and thought-provoking as well. Standouts to me were his intuitive descriptions of his BDT model and his local volatility model for options pricing, which I found thrillingly lucid. There is quite a bit of both physics and finance in this book, and while Derman tries hard to keep the technical content at a layman's level, I am not quite sure that it would be truly accessible to someone who doesn't know some of both. This is particularly true for the physics stuff, but I can't be too hard on him, as modern high-energy physics is by all accounts truly formidable.
One thing that bugs me about Derman, both at his talk and in his book, is the priggish reductionist faith in physical theory I've seen time and time again in "theory of everything" theoretical high-energy physics types. That he repeatedly and self-assuredly waxes philosophical throughout the book makes this even more annoying. The dichotomy he draws between the "perfect" reductionist theories of fundamental forces and elementary particles, peering into God's thoughts, and the imperfect models of finance rings false to me. Science is full of models whose predictive power, as a result of incomplete information and/or complex dynamics, is useful but necessarily limited. Ingenuity can unleash entirely new conceptual worlds in places far removed from the Standard Model, and even fundamental physical laws get overturned when new experiments find discrepancies. That financial models can both have predictive power but are ultimately limited or wrong would not be troubling in the least to the vast majority of quantitative scientists, who have to deal with such limitations daily in their work. So it irritates me when he conflates all of science - or even all of physics - with the rarefied corner of theoretical physics with which he is familiar. Perhaps this is due to a narrow education, but he has had many chances to correct that.
Still, this was a very interesting book about a remarkable career. I am glad I read it.
Top reviews from other countries
- Ronald S. DavisReviewed in Canada on June 26, 2024
5.0 out of 5 stars Interesting example of a theoretical physicist who went into a distantly related field.
This book tells a lot about the life of a graduate student, and then post-doctoral fellow, in theoretical physics. After that, theoretical physicists often go into other fields after finishing their degrees, a trend that started in World War II. Many of them go into financial work. This book details an interesting example of the latter.
- Conor BoyleReviewed in the United Kingdom on August 28, 2024
5.0 out of 5 stars Life isn’t so linear
This book was very insightful and gave great insight into how a successful career looks throughout the course of a lifetime.
Derman does a great job of detailing how he moved from one industry to another in an extremely honest fashion.
Later in the book he discusses life as a quant through his “boots on the ground” point of view, I think he does a really great job in detailing the reality of what it is like to work as a quant - perhaps not what many imagine
- gaston mendoza veiranaReviewed in Belgium on May 26, 2024
4.0 out of 5 stars The book is excellent! It's not dedicated to individual quants but more to groups
The cover was broken
gaston mendoza veiranaThe book is excellent! It's not dedicated to individual quants but more to groups
Reviewed in Belgium on May 26, 2024
Images in this review
- emed0sReviewed in Spain on September 24, 2023
5.0 out of 5 stars Nice peaking into physics and finance
Interesting view into the world of physics at the tail end of the nuclear revolution, followed by a trip into the 80's and 90's Wall Street, topped with a world class closing statement on the limitations of financial engineering vs those of physics.
Solidly written so that is never too boring a read.
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JJReviewed in Mexico on January 4, 2021
5.0 out of 5 stars Excelente reseña de la crisis de 2008
Me pareció un libro bien escrito, desde la perspectiva de una persona que estuvo dentro del sistema financiero. Las anécdotas vienen bien aderezadas con un análisis más formal. Excelente lectura.