'R' you experienced?

" ... To confer, converse, and otherwise hob-nob with my brother wizards ..."

I spent a productive weekend up in Chicago, at the R/Finance 2009: Applied Finance with R conference, which billed itself as the "first annual R/Finance conference for applied finance using R". The conference organizers and hosts are the 'usual suspects' on the 'R sig fin' mailing list; Jeffrey Ryan, Dirk Eddelbuettel, Dale Rosenthal, Brian Peterson, Peter Carl, Gib Bassett, and John Miller, assisted by the talented and imperturbable Holly Griffin of UIC. Pretty clearly most of this group code together regularly; see the committer list on the blotter module. The venue was at the 'other school' in Chicago, the one with a more practical interest in Economics and Finance

An aside about Chicago: Long ago, and far away, I was trained as a acolyte 'monetarist' by disciples of Herb Stein's CEA and the Fed, in the [University of] Chicago school [a fad, seemingly long forgotten by recent Economics and Finance grads, so far as I can tell]. Monetarism is a forgotten religion these days; the Fed stopped formally publishing its M3 series a few years ago, in light of the rise of what Bill Gross calls the 'shadow banking' system.

Luke: [The robot] claims to be the property of an Obi-Wan Kenobi. Is he a relative of yours? Do you know what he's talking about?
Obi-Wan: Obi-Wan Kenobi. Obi-Wan... Now, that's a name I've not heard in a long time. A long time.
Luke: I think my uncle knows him. He said he was dead.
Obi-Wan: Oh, he's not dead... Not yet.
Luke: You know him?
Obi-Wan: But of course I know him

Many of the organizers were known to me from my email correspondence or from observing their packages, and I had spoken with one (Dirk) two or three years ago briefly after the trading shim was first usable

Dirk seems to be a bundle of unbounded energy. His tools had solved a lot of data storage and visualization issues for me early on in our project. He led a push a couple years back to drill in many of the R add-on modules into the main Debian archives. I still hope to emulate his example in rpm space using R2spec and some post-processing scripts (Dependency enumeration is not quite perfect yet). Dirk has already mentioned in his blog the 'after-sessions' at Jak's; we closed the place down Saturday with useful brainstorming happening long into the night

I had resolved to travel to the conference to learn, and to stay quiet as to matters of FOSS and advocacy. I was almost even able to keep to that intent, save at the interstitial times. The formal presentations were amazing in their quality of content, competence of the presenters, and challenging to my old knowledge of Statistics and Mathematics. I even understood most of what the presenters were doing, and why, on the formal finance side and will re-read the slide decks with great interest when they appear to fill in the holes. One would have probably had to be there to draw much more from the decks, as the presenters were not doing the occasional 'stand and read' presentation one finds at some conferences, but rather largely used their decks as reminders of the points they wanted to hit and elaborate on in their presentation, and to state exactly the code and formulae in play. The committee have really set a high bar to reach for next year's event to top, and I look forward to it already

The pre-conference tutorials were worthwhile. I knew Jeff Ryan's work from xts and IBrokers of course, and gained insight into his mental roadmap on where the code is going and how it will get there. I think the enhancements he is trialling in xts will pretty clearly flow back upstream into zoo in general form; I had not heard of Dale before, but his breakout and presentation of an analytic approach on addition and testing of single constraints (I have covered scientific method and epistemology here before, and will again) served as a fine warm-up to the formal sessions

During the session breaks, at meals, and into the night, I had a chance for give and take at length with several of the committee, presenters, and attendees, to bridge what Patrick Burns spoke on -- the chasm between Practice and Theory

Part of the trip and my need for listen, was to get a handle on how to match the shim and R as a pair of heavy-weight co-processes, so that the user of the shim can hook in and use the wonderful tools already in R space. We'll most likely get there, but the timing is not clear. Having said 'we', permit me to make it clear that the heavy lifting will be done, if and when done, by Bill, and not me. At the prodding of Peter, who as I understand it regularly team codes with Brian, I have started the sign-up process for an account at r-forge, and will 'cut my teeth' on a simple connector or module, to warm up my skills as a co-development tester and 'guinea pig' consumer of the major task of integrating the shim

FIX rules the roost for being the 'lingua Franca' for interchange to exchange order, position and fill data with counter-party upstream brokers or exchanges (thanks here to the CME Foundation for partially funding the event). We will not soon be adding a compressed FIX connector to the shim, and certainly not before we attain our major milestone of a formal 'complete' first release.

Finally, a couple folks asked why we were playing down in retail space with the TWS and its vendor specific API. For a researcher, and for a small proprietary trader, we still find IB's API and services the most affordable, and substantially complete. It is a gateway to enable any interested researcher to do material research (the 'Theory') and strategy development and execution (the 'Practice'). For student academics, the availability of IB's 'trading Olympiad' program and the shim, and R offer all one needs for a better than free price

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Update: We see also the summary of the event at Revolution Computing, an R vendor

I propose that women have 28 teeth

Why have men more teeth than women?
By reason of the abundance of heat and blood which is more in men than in women.
  -- "Of the Teeth.", Aristotle

One of the mysteries behind the quote above, was why Aristotle did not simply find a near-by woman, and ask her to permit him to count her teeth

How do we know what we 'know' to be true? The difference here is of course that between 'deductive' and 'inductive' analysis

Political 'debate' and flame wars on which Linux distribution (package manager, editor, MTA, and so on ad infinitum) is better, often degenerate to deductive reasoning from a firmly held (perhaps from ideological basis, perhaps from prior experience) 'Theory'. Then one is to state a testable 'Hypothesis', and actually perform field or experimental 'Observation' to validate or disprove that hypothesis, and finally, reaching a 'Conclusion' that the Theory is supported or not. Aristotle omitted the critical stages of testing his hypothesis, and so fell into error with his assertion. Pure reason lead him astray

It is just as easy to fall into error from the inductive reasoning side. I have noted for many years now that in early February, I see newspaper reports that the groundhog ("Punxsutawney Phil") is reported as seeing his shadow (consider the hints from the Bill Murray movies, 'Caddyshack' and 'Groundhog Day'). That he sees his shadow seems to cause Winter to continue for six weeks or so

The cardinal birds also must read the newspaper and observe the shadow sighting report in timing their return to north of the Mason-Dixon Line. When the timing is right, the cardinals return to my town. It takes a week or two, but once the cardinals have reported back to the southern over-wintering havens, the robins follow them

The return of the cardinals also cause the forsythia bush out back to bloom (I suspect there is some needed chemical agent in the bird droppings). This is important because it needs to snow on the forsythia three times before it is safe to plant the vegetable garden to avoid the seedlings being frozen and killed

My chain of 'Observation' is most careful, taken over many years. A 'Pattern' emerged that I could see, and so I formed a 'Hypothesis' as to what was occurring. My 'Theory' seems to explain nature well. The 'inductive' results are of course completely wrong, untestable, and confuses co-incidence (sequentially timed events) with causation

The XKCD website has this:

and if you are not reading that site regularly, you should be. We'll be using statistics soon enough here

At the end of all the back and forth about deductive and inductive methods, we have to end up at the conclusion that pure logic is but an organized way of committing error. Nothing can replace putting forth a testable hypothesis, and getting down and dirty in the data testing it to confirmation or refutation

Critical note. — Of a piece with the absurd pedagogical demand for so-called constructive criticism is the doctrine that an iconoclast is a hollow and evil fellow unless he can prove his case. Why, indeed, should he prove it? Is he judge, jury, prosecuting officer, hangman? He proves enough, indeed, when he proves by his blasphemy that this or that idol is defectively convincing — that at least one visitor to the shrine is left full of doubts. The fact is enormously significant; it indicates that instinct has somehow risen superior to the shallowness of logic, the refuge of fools. The pedant and the priest have always been the most expert of logicians — and the most diligent disseminators of nonsense and worse. The liberation of the human mind has never been furthered by such learned dunderheads; it has been furthered by gay fellows who heaved dead cats into sanctuaries and then went roistering down the highways of the world, proving to all men that doubt, after all, was safe — that the god in the sanctuary was finite in his power, and hence a fraud. One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms. It is not only more effective; it is also vastly more intelligent.
  — The American Mercury. p. 75., Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)

But then you get a lot of angry letters, from those whose clay idol you have smashed

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edit: two typo fixes

Who is in charge, here?

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master - that's all."
   -- Through the Looking Glass

A U S Supreme Court memorandum order (called a 'Slip Opinion' here) today said:

PER CURIAM.
The writ of certiorari is dismissed as improvidently
granted.
It is so ordered.

http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/08pdf/07-1216.pdf

Some Latin in there. 'PER CURIAM' is: By the Court as a complete panel and entity, without specific attribution of the action to any particular Justice. A 'writ of certiorari' is: a publicly stated intent of the Court to receive a case for presentation and argument, and possibly (usually) decision.

That a matter is characterized as: "improvidently granted" is not Latin, but is a 'term of art' -- basically: It turns out we (as a decision making body) cannot, will not, or should decide after, and we decline to consider the particular aspect of the case we initially though we should hear for the present.

It happens -- maybe with one member of the Court ill, the Court decided it needed to lighten its load; perhaps some conflict came to light in the investment portfolio of some Justices that the remaining (non-recusing) panel members of the Court felt now that fairly they could not hear and decide the matter, to avoid the appearance of making a biased, short handed, or improper decision.

The functional effect of such a terse statement is to leave intact and in effect the next prior lower court's ruling

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While a lawyer's craft is well depicted in television crime procedurals, the more cerebral parts of avoiding issues which make one interesting for television, are decidedly more valuable services a lawyer provides to the general society, when advising a client. A lawyer's opinion can help the client see the areas to avoid; how to structure its affairs. The Court speaks in a completely understood fashion here, to communicate just what it intends to say, and nothing else

The recent 'mob rule' in Congress of vilifying and proposing to punishingly tax the folks at AIG who had clear contracts for payment of a 'retention' and performance bonus, in exchange for staying on as the ship of AIG seemed to be sinking (and indeed staying and doing their contractual duty) show how fragile civilization is. All the hollow words about 'fairness' and populist anger cannot mask the fact that Congress successfully pointed the finger of blame away from itself and the government, and toward a tiny minority of our society. If a Constitution, contracts, and rule of law are so readily cast aside, no one is safe. Paris 1789 and following, all over again. Whom shall the mob turn to next?

The use of words is how we explain to another, and sometimes to ourselves, what we are thinking; why we believe what we believe; permit us to reflect and find weak points in our thought processes. Structured words -- Court decisions, Constitutions, laws, opinion letters from lawyers are part of an ongoing societal dialog

We are all diminished when cheap talk trumps reason