Tree Bagger & Tree Booster: MatLab for Data-Driven Fitting
Let’s say you want to create a predictive model without assuming an analytical form to the model. How would you go about it? On August 14, 2012, Richard Willey, Technical Marketing Manager at MathWorks, demonstrated via webinar how input data could be fit using machine-learning approaches. The emphasis here is data-driven, as opposed to model-driven, fitting. “A limitation of regression techniques is that the user must specify a functional form,” said Willey, and the choice of that model is usually based on the domain model. Typically the data points are fit with high-order polynomials or Fourier series. Or, the user might run the data […]
“We Need to Fix the Plumbing”
Allan Grody is a man with a mission. The fall-out from the financial meltdown has shone a light on many things that need fixing within the financial system, and of these, Grody is focusing on one especially leaky, corroded pipe. Grody, president of Financial Intergroup, was addressing a GARP (Global Association of Risk Professionals) audience as the third of three panelists on “Modernizing Financial Risk Management: The Changing Technology Paradigm” on May 22, 2012. Early in his presentation, Grody showed a complex summation diagram. Titled “Need to Fix the Plumbing,” it was a kind of map, one that deserves a place […]
Real-Time Risk Analytics, SAS Style
“Analysts in capital markets get pummeled with vast quantities of information,” said Jeff Hasmann, “sometimes receiving as many as twenty newsfeeds per day. How are they to make sense of it all?” Hasmann was the first of three panelists speaking at the Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP) webinar, “Modernizing Financial Risk Management: The Changing Technology Paradigm” on May 22, 2012. There is a push to modernize financial risk management from both above and below. Besides handling information overload, Hasmann noted there are several reasons to modernize: evolving regulations, improvements in efficiency to be gained, and needs for standardization. Hasmann, […]



