Let’s say I go to a burger joint, and want to forecast how good the burger will be. First, I need to use a bunch of input data. This can include observations derived from questions, such as how many people are in the restaurant? How much is the burger? What are the ingredients of the…
Category: Data
Data, Events, General
Thoughts from Lisbon LxMLS on ML, LLMs/ChatGPT and more
by Saeed Amen •
Lisbon will forever be associated with exploration given its position and history. Cabo da Roca nearby is the last land you’ll see in mainland Europe before you head across ocean, as countless Portuguese explorers have done so in the past. The sea also impacts the diet: Bacelhau, salted cod is the national dish of Portugal.…
Data, General, Macro
Why forecasting economic data is so hard
by Saeed Amen •
I like burgers and I also like to try new burger joints. There’s always a risk to trying new a place. Maybe the burger won’t be cooked in the same way, maybe the patty won’t be quite as good quality, maybe the chips will be soggy etc. In some cases, it could be a factor…
Data, General
Clean data and Twitter blue ticks
by Saeed Amen •
I’m not a very good cook, although I can make a good burger, and this opinion is obviously in no way biased! One of the few things I do know, is that you need to make sure that before preparing the vegetables from your burger, like lettuce and tomato, you need to clean them first…
Data, General
Dealing with rare events in financial models
by Saeed Amen •
Harold Macmillan, the British prime minister between 1957-1963, was once asked, what was the most challenging thing he faced. His reply was “events, dear boy, events”. It may well be an apocryphal, and it has been suggested that he instead said “the opposition of events”. Politics is obviously not the only place, where events have…
Data, General, Macro
When should you release a model in production?
by Saeed Amen •
What’s the general process for buying a burger from a restaurant? You look at a menu, you order, and the waiter or waitress returns to your table, with a burger, ready for you to eat. They might offer some additional condiments, and then you can enjoy your burger. Next time you go to the restaurant,…
Data, Foreign Exchange, General, Macro, Python
Hundreds of quant papers from #QuantLinkADay in 2022
by Saeed Amen •
If you follow me on Twitter (@saeedamenfx), you’ll notice that I post a lot of stuff about burgers (yes, I do like them). In an effort to make sure that I at least regularly post quant content (as opposed to burger based tweets), I started posting a daily link under the #QuantLinkADay hashtag. Usually these…
Data, General, Macro
The importance of independent forecasts
by Saeed Amen •
Sometimes we can really predict the future. These days weather forecasters ingest massive amounts of data to come up with their forecasts. Admittedly, they are not always 100% accurate, but they are noticeably more accurate than they were say 20 years ago. In financial markets, the likelihood of being extremely accurate in predicting the…
Data, General
What is “good” for a model?
by Saeed Amen •
If we have no reference, we have no way to compare. If you’ve never had a burger before, there’s no point of reference for what a burger tastes like. Of course, there will be other points of reference, maybe a steak you’ve had before? Or if it’s a veggie burger, then perhaps tofu? It isn’t…
Data, General
Machine learning for data cleaning
by Saeed Amen •
Every data scientist wants to do the fun stuff, ie. building models! You might be forecasting a variable. Perhaps you are classifying a variable into a specific group. Machine learning is usually part of this, whether it’s a simpler linear model or something more complicated that can take into non-linear relationships, whether that is a…