A Short Letter From A SteelTown

Not so few of us UnRiskers are born into the fire and heat feeling of a steel town. The steel maker is voestalpine.


Not surprisingly we enjoy a long-lived partnership with them - focussing on quantitative methods for process simulation and automation, quality management ... where the models need to be solved fast, accurate and robust.

But this is not the main reason why the book cover let you feel the heat.

Expose traps practitioners fall into

Quantitative skills are a prerequisite for everyone in quant finance. A thorough grounding in advanced numerical techniques necessary, as the ability to assess their adequateness, qualities and limitations. This is what the book is about - a thorough introduction to each method, revealing the numerical traps that practitioners frequently fall into.

The book is the result of cross-sectoral mathematics experience. Numerical schemes transferred from complex technical systems to finance are presented, referenced with practical examples. They include schemes that are not so common in financial circles.

Making hig-quality steel is not so easy 

To control fire-and-heat processes you usually need to model various phenomena, flows of solids and liquids, chemical reactions or metallurgical transformations, .. thermodynamic processes and what have you. If you are faster than the real process you create a lot of benefit.

And you need to control risk. If the iron breaks through the shell of a blast furnace or a continuous casting plants all being around better run quickly away.

So, being a coal-faced mathematician in finance is being lucky ....