Stalking The Black Swan

Kenneth A. Posner spent close to two decades as a Wall Street analyst, tracking the so-called "specialty finance" sector, which included controversial companies such as Countrywide, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, CIT, and MasterCard many of which were caught in the subprime mortgage and capital markets crisis of 2007. While extreme volatility is nothing new in finance, the recent downturn caught many off guard, indicating that the traditional approach to decision making had let them down. Introducing a new framework for handling and evaluating extreme risk, Posner draws on years of experience to show how decision makers can best cope with the "Black Swans" of our time. Posner's shrewd assessment combines the classic fundamental research approach of Benjamin Graham and David Dodd with more recent developments in cognitive science, computational theory, and quantitative finance. He outlines a probabilistic approach to decision making that involves forecasting across a range of scenarios, and he explains how to balance confidence, react accurately to fast-breaking information, overcome information overload, zero in on the critical issues, penetrate the information asymmetry shielding corporate executives, and integrate the power of human intuition with sophisticated analytics. Emphasizing the computational resources we already have at our disposal our computers and our minds Posner offers a new track to decision making for analysts, investors, traders, corporate executives, risk managers, regulators, policymakers, journalists, and anyone who faces a world of extreme volatility.

While many books talk about forecasting and decision making, this one is particularly engaging because of Kenneth A. Posner's personal experience - and the honesty with which he discusses it. As a longtime analyst at Morgan Stanley, Posner had to make decisions about whether to invest in many recent high-profile, high-stakes "Black Swan" anomalies. He explains general models and approaches to dealing with uncertainty, sorting information, and developing your analytical skills and judgment. That alone is worthwhile, but the book is especially lively when Posner reviews his specific decisions. He shares his reasoning and exposes his successes and his failures to public view. The result is a knowledge-dense but very readable work that getAbstract recommends to all analysts, but also to those who want to deal with information overload and improve their decision making.

Safety and Reliability of Complex Engineered Systems contains the Proceedings of the 25th European Safety and Reliability Conference, ESREL 2015, held 7-10 September 2015 in Zurich, Switzerland. It includes about 570 papers accepted for presentation at the conference. These contributions focus on theories and methods in the area of risk, safety and

Convicted sex offenders released from custody at the end of their criminal sentences pose a risk for re-offense. In many US states, Sexually Violent Predator (SVP) laws have been enacted that allow for the post-prison preventive detention of high risk sex offenders. SVP laws require the courts to make dispositions that protect the public from harm while at the same time respecting the civil rights of the offender. This book describes these SVP laws, their constitutionality, and aspects of their operation. Courts hear expert risk testimony based heavily on the results of actuarial risk assessment. Problems associated with this testimony include the lack of a theory of recidivism risk, bias due to human decision-making, and the insularity of scholarship and practice along developmental lines. The authors propose changes in legal standards, as well as a unified developmental model that treats sexual violence as an "evolving" condition, with roots traceable to childhood and paths that extend into adolescence and adulthood.

In this 2012 edition of Advances in Knowledge-Based and Intelligent Information and Engineering Systems the latest innovations and advances in Intelligent Systems and related areas are presented by leading experts from all over the world. The 228 papers that are included cover a wide range of topics. One emphasis is on Information Processing, which has become a pervasive phenomenon in our civilization. While the majority of Information Processing is becoming intelligent in a very broad sense, major research in Semantics, Artificial Intelligence and Knowledge Engineering supports the domain specific applications that are becoming more and more present in our everyday living. Ontologies play a major role in the development of Knowledge Engineering in various domains, from Semantic Web down to the design of specific Decision Support Systems. Research on Ontologies and their applications is a highly active front of current Computational Intelligence science that is addressed here. Other subjects in this volume are modern Machine Learning, Lattice Computing and Mathematical Morphology.The wide scope and high quality of these contributions clearly show that knowledge engineering is a continuous living and evolving set of technologies aimed at improving the design and understanding of systems and their relations with humans.

In Regency London, an unconventional scientist and a fearless female artist team up to trap a cold-hearted killer: “Thoroughly enjoyable” (Deanna Raybourn, New York Times–bestselling author). The Earl of Wrexford possesses a brilliant scientific mind, but boredom and pride lead him to reckless behavior. So when pompous, pious Reverend Josiah Holworthy publicly condemns him for debauchery, Wrexford unsheathes his rapier-sharp wit and strikes back. As their war of words escalates, London’s most popular satirical cartoonist, A.J. Quill, skewers them both. But then the clergyman is found slain in a church—his face burned by chemicals, his throat slashed ear to ear—and Wrexford finds himself the chief suspect. An artist in her own right, Charlotte Sloane has secretly slipped into the persona of her late husband, using his nom de plume, A.J. Quill. When Wrexford discovers her true identity, she fears it will be her undoing. But he has a proposal—use her sources to unveil the clergyman’s clandestine involvement in questionable scientific practices, and unmask the real murderer. Soon Lord Wrexford and the mysterious Mrs. Sloane plunge into a dangerous shadow world hidden among London’s intellectual enclaves to trap a cunning adversary—before they fall victim to the next experiment in villainy . . . “Sharp, engaging characters, rich period detail, and a compellingly twisty plot, Andrea Penrose delivers a winner.” —Deanna Raybourn, New York Times–bestselling author “Fans of C.S. Harris take note! A riveting ride through Regency London, from the slums of St. Giles, to the mansions of Mayfair.” —Lauren Willig, New York Times–bestselling author “Historical chemistry meets alchemy . . . A delight of a book.&rdquo

These transactions publish research in computer-based methods of computational collective intelligence (CCI) and their applications in a wide range of fields such as performance optimization in IoT, big data, reliability, privacy, security, service selection, QoS and machine learning. This thirty-fourth issue contains 12 selected papers which present new findings and innovative methodologies as well as discuss issues and challenges in the field of collective intelligence in group decision making with special emphasize given to voting theory, power indices and graphs while addressing elections, social choices, IoT and allocation algorithms.