Haiku spam and double digit sigma events

Haiku Schmaiku

Howdy Ma'am,
Just spam, I am.
Five syllables short

-- Bloggerel Doggerel blog, 2007

Verse is courtesy of The Climateer, who doesn't write about climate too often, thankfully! He has a great blog description which is perpetually relevant: "In war, everything not censored is a lie."

The Climateer DOES write about investment bankers who blame statistics for their poor trading decisions... or possibly, outright deceptive practices. There was a lot of that going on in 2008. I finally hoisted some posts about double-digit standard deviations from my bookmarks and read them.

25 Sigma Event Very Unlucky

From Climateer Investor and others along the way, it seems like a 25 sigma event is impossible. "How unlucky is 25 sigma?" (2011): When Goldman Sachs was Really, Really Unlucky: 

"One of the more memorable moments of last summer’s credit crunch came when the CFO of Goldman Sachs, David Viniar, announced in August that Goldman’s flagship GEO hedge fund had lost 27% of its value since the start of the year."

As Mr. Viniar explained, “We were seeing things that were 25-standard deviation moves, several days in a row.” 

One commentator wryly noted: 

"That Viniar. What a comic. According to Goldman’s mathematical models, August, Year of Our Lord 2007, was a very special month. Things were happening that were only supposed to happen once in every 100,000 years. Either that … or Goldman’s models were wrong." 

See too the follow-up post a few months later in December 2011, "Barclays Hit With "Immense" Copper Trading Loss; 50 Sigma Move In Cancelled Aluminum Warrants. 50 sigma events don't happen.

David Viniar has quite a colorful past regarding accuracy and math. The Wall Street Journal wrote this fun, very brief article about him in 2012, Goldman Sachs CFO To Moody's: You Make No Sense. There's no paywall for you my loyal readers, because I get special links as a subscriber. Choice excerpts:

Goldman Sach's CFO David Viniar was asked on the bank's conference call about a possible downgrade by Moody's to Goldman and other investment banks. He responded with a sharp critique of Moody's ability to analyse. 

"We are as you know, we are quite analytical and when we do all of the analysis we cannot figure out why they are where they are," Viniar said. He added coyly "And so I just wanted to tell you that."

But Moody's isn't alone in having its math questioned by Viniar. Viniar also seemed perplexed by the Federal Reserve's arithmetic...

April was the month of mathematics

April 2020 was the scheduled date for the most recent Mathematics and Statistics Awareness Month. It is a biannual event, i.e. held once every two years. Sadly, it was uniquely ill-timed to coincide with the arrival of the full-force of the COVID-19 global pandemic. A lot of recurring events have fallen by the wayside. 

Tea for 8 by S. Goldstine

Possibly even worse is the fact that I see no mention of

any activities for 2022. I noticed this while browsing through the pages of the online Mathematical Imagery SIG (special interest group) of the American Mathematical Society (AMS). I encourage readers to visit! Included here are two scaled-down examples that I liked. 

The Four-Color Theorem works for any map on a plane or a sphere, i.e. four colors are sufficient to color every neighboring region with a different color. For other shapes, say this toroidal tea set, eight colors were necessary. 

Polar coordinates
by D.A. Lakew 

The shape on the left is a group of super-imposed polar surfaces. There is much more, along with detailed explanations, equations, etc. 

 You will also find pleasing drawing such as those I shared in my Cornucopia of Mathematics post, dating back to the turn of the century, uh, this century. Although I didn't hot link to the images (well, maybe one), and gave full credit to the source, a 2003 academic event at a university in New England, I noticed a few months later that the source web pages had gone 404 error not found.

On the origins of Mathematics Awareness Month

As any blog reader of mine knows, I strive to find surprising information. The origin of AMS's Mathematics and Statistics Awareness Month can be traced back to none other than... Ronald Reagan?