Gaetan Lion

Excellent primer on Cluster Analysis, July 16 2004

I have become a big fan of this little green book series. I belong to a very quantitatively oriented in-house think tank of a major West Coast financial service institution. As a very regular MBA, I often wonder what I am doing in such a group. These little green books have bailed me out several times and provided me the understanding on various esoteric advanced statistical methods. Thanks to these books I taught myself Logistic Regression, and Discriminant Analysis.

About two weeks ago, one of our best Russian mathematicians left our group. He had developed an expertise in Cluster Analysis. My boss assigned me to become his successor as a Cluster Analyst so to speak. If it were… Read more

So much info, so easy to read, a rare combination!, July 15 2004

William Bernstein is an excellent economics and business writer. I have read several of his other books, including "Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk." He is also a very savvy writer on investment theory. Bernstein has the ability to teach and write about technical concepts in the most accessible way. "The Birth of Plenty" is no exception. This book covers such a breadth of subjects regarding economics, political science, history from the antiquity to nowadays.

His theory is not unique. The countries who prosper are the ones who give their citizen the right to own their property, to communicate freely with each other, to practice the scientific method to replace… Read more

Excellent insider's account of the Fed, July 12 2004

This is an excellent book that gives you a good insider's view on how monetary policy is crafted within the Fed. The author experienced one of the most interesting terms in the history of the Federal Reserve Bank. This is not only because of the frequent currency crisis, sovereign defaults, hedge fund bail out, stock market bubbles and crashes. These are the usual villains. But, it is the "New Economy" that became the paradigm shift in the Fed's monetary policy.

In essence, Alan Greenspan became convinced that the sustainable economic growth rate without causing undue inflation was substantially higher than it was in the past. As a result, Greenspan was comfortable… Read more