A Tale of Two Pens
Written for the Straits Times, this piece was withdrawn because the anecdotes were published on this blog before. Here it is, to wish you a Happy Father’s Day 2026!
Columns
A large number of posts in this blog are my columns published in the Singaporean newspaper called “Today,” and in a well-known quantitative finance magazine called The Wilmott Magazine. These published (and upcoming) columns are blogged here for your reading pleasure.
Writer’s Block
I was suffering from a prolonged writer’s block, and was away from my blog for almost four months — probably
Debates, The Wilmott Magazine, Quantitative Finance
Risk – Wiley FinCAD Webinar
This post is an edited version of my responses in a Webinar panel-discussion organized by Wiley-Finance and FinCAD. The freely available Webcast is linked in the post, and contains responses from the other participants — Paul Wilmott and Espen Huag. An expanded version of this post may later appear as an article in the Wilmott Magazine.
Columns, French, Topical, Unpublished
Luddite Thoughts
Wondering if our so-called progress is actually a blind march toward chaos an anarchy, I present a slightly disorganized line of thought in this short piece.
The Wilmott Magazine, Topical, Quantitative Finance
Risk: Interpretation, Innovation and Implementation
An invite to a Webinar organized by FinCAD and Wiley Global Finance, featuring Paul Wilmott, Epsen Haug and yours faithfully…
The Wilmott Magazine, Quantitative Finance, Columns
Physics vs. Finance
The last post in this series of Love of Math looks at how math gets used in physics and finance. Or, more precisely, how one has to be careful about the assumptions in modeling stuff, and the pitfalls of (the lack of) error propagation.
Columns, The Wilmott Magazine, Topical, Quantitative Finance
Math and Patterns
Most kids love patterns. Math is just patterns. So is life. Math, therefore, is merely a formal way of describing life, or at least the patterns we encounter in life. So, where is the difficulty in loving maths? Here is the second post in this series.
Love of Math
This is another short series of posts on love of math — that questionable gift. Recently, I was asked to think about how to make kids love math. Here are my thoughts, as the first of three posts. This article will be published in Wilmott Magazine.
The Unreal Universe
I recently made my first book available on Amazon. I thought I would post this article, which is a good summary of the book. This article was published in a magazine in Singapore.
The Wilmott Magazine, Topical, Work and Life, Corporate Life, Quantitative Finance, Columns
In Our Defense
Here is an article defending (to some extent) the insane salary expectations of the elite bankers and traders. And quants. This piece will appear in my regular column in Wilmott Magazine.
Columns, The Today Paper, Corporate Life
Graceless Singaporean
Newspaper column in Today on 2 Aug 2008.
We Singaporeans have a problem. We are graceless, they say. So we train ourselves to say the right magic words at the right times and to smile at random intervals. We still come across as a bit graceless at times.
We have to bite the bullet and face the music; we may be a bit on the rude side — when judged by the western norms of pasticky grace popularized by the media. But we don’t do too badly when judged by our own mixed bag of Asian cultures […]
Columns, Unpublished, Life and Death, Quantitative Finance
Food Prices and Terrible Choices
Economists have too many hands. On the one hand, they may declare something good. On the other hand, they may say, “well, not so much.” Some of them may have even a third or fourth hand. My ex-boss, an economist himself, once remarked that he wished he could chop off some of these hands. […]