Monday, December 10, 2012

Science Myth

Bankers seemed to have believed in the science myth. They used math to prove that what they were doing was fine for such things as the Collateralized Debt Obligation (CDO). Actually it was modelling. But the point is it was all mathematics. They did not consider people, or things like ethics. Never considering that just because you can do something, it does not mean you should.

They also seemed to forget that models are only as good as their assumptions and data input. Do not get me wrong. I think models are great. They can show you interesting things.

However, scientists and mathematicians with their models should also consider a saying of programmers. That saying is garbage in, garbage out.

The science myth is that US bankers thought that they were doing science. They hired all these mathematicians right? These mathematicians were doing models right? Their models showed that there was something 1 in a million years the whole US real estate market would fall. Of course there would be real estate market falls in some areas, but not the whole US market. One problem was that the banker's mathematicians were only using input data that was digitized. There was only a limited amount of data digitized...

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