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Dr._Allison_Cameron |

Steven A Cohen

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TackDriver1956	Steven A Cohen Feb 3 2009, 7:42 AM EST \| Post edited: Feb 3 2009, 7:42 AM EST Nice to see someone's paying attention. Post reply Do you find this valuable?
Dr._Allison_Cameron	1. RE: Steven A Cohen Feb 11 2009, 10:41 PM EST "Nice to see someone's paying attention." Truly, I didn't see this until just now! I almost never go back into my profile to review it -- I should know what I put there, right? But I happened to go in and see this just now. I guess I'm more than a week late. Not "paying attention." I like Steven A Cohen because he has been a successful investor employing trading strategies. Steven A Cohen's hedge fund firm is named SAC Capital. For a hedge fund, it's actually unusually well-known. More people have heard of Warren Buffett as a successful investor using value-style strategies. Both have done well in a difficult field, through good times and bad. I picked my heroes because they are men who have been able to do hard things with apparent ease. They can look at the same information that other people look at, but they can come up with different ideas that can make big differences in end results. All four of these "heroes" are distinguished in interpreting existing information to obtain high-value-added insights. When I make posts, I try to take the same basic stuff that everybody else has and say something that hasn't been posted by anybody else yet. Or to say it in a significantly more relevant way. I like being being value added by using a more thoughtful thought process. My chief reason for being on this wiki is to help me understand what's going on in TSCC. i had become so confused and frustrated. With the help of reading everyone's posts I have put together explanations that satisfy my curiousity. A value added analysis of the same information that everyone has. I'm happy again. Post reply Do you find this valuable?
Dr._Allison_Cameron	2. RE: Steven A Cohen Feb 12 2009, 8:57 AM EST Of course, Einstein was able to explain observations about light and gravity by developing the theories of special and general relativity. I particularly like the way he re-expressed gravity as the result of curvature in space rather than treating it like a simple force, as everyone else had since Newton. Feynman got the Nobel Prize for his work on quantum electrodynamics. (I don't really know what that is.) But he was a very smart guy who, for example, was able to explain the space shuttle crash as the result of rubber O-rings having gotten frozen. Nobody else was even close. Also, Feynman had the ability to explain even the most complex and abstract concepts in simple, easy to grasp terms. That's a real gift. Warren Buffett is a well-known successful value investor. Value investing involves looking at a company and comparing it to its stock price. This way one can tell if the stock is expensive or cheap relative to the value of the company. Buffett's take on value investing led him to companies that had great franchises that had good growth opportunities (like Coca Cola years ago), and he bought those stocks before other investors caught on. They've done well for him. SAC Capital is a very profitable trading-oriented hedge fund. I actually don't have any examples of what they do, but I can make up an example of what I think they do. It's well understood that technology companies sometimes have disappointing earnings announcements, and their lawyers often urge them to pre-release bad news (that would push the stocks down) as soon as they know it, usually in the first week following the end of the quarter. It would therefore make sense to short (sell) tech stocks before that week, even without knowing who's going to release bad news. If no bad news is forthcoming, it would make sense to buy the stocks in the third week, because you know the earnings will be OK when released in week four or five. Ha! Post reply Do you find this valuable?
TackDriver1956	3. RE: Steven A Cohen Feb 12 2009, 9:46 AM EST DAC, I never really liked Einstein's conclusions with respect to the speed of light, and spent (wasted) a lot of time in my Sophomore year at UConn, trying to understand him well enough to find holes in his theory. Not having either the IQ or advanced education accumulated, I didn't get very far. Einstein's thought experiments exploring how observers in different reference frames would perceive the same phenomenon, were valuable starting points for my own consideration of the time travel paradoxes in 'our' show. Feynman I learned about later, after the Challenger commission. I was aware that engineers at Morton-Thiokol had expressed reservations about the low temperature performance of the elastomer O-Rings, but were unable to impress their management with the seriousness of their concerns. Feynman got credit for clamping a piece of O-Ring in a C-clamp, and dunking it in his 32F ice water at the conference table while discussing the problem, then removing the clamp and showing everyone the "indent" that didn't go away. SEE! Another thing I liked about Feinman, was his irreverence for authority: he made a game of taunting security at Los Alamos, and even deduced the combinations for many of the lockable filing cabinets. I really loved his answer when asked how he was able to be so successful with women: "You have to ASK them". Something sooooo difficult for so many young techie types. I have to confess to not paying enough attention to my investments, something that is certainly much more important to a comfortable retirement than, say, a certain science-fiction television show. That was why your choice of heros impressed me. Thanks for reminding me: I NEED to do that. Care for a cup of coffee? <grins> Post reply Do you find this valuable?
Dr._Allison_Cameron	4. RE: Steven A Cohen Feb 12 2009, 11:56 AM EST "DAC, I never really liked Einstein's conclusions with respect to the speed of light, and spent (wasted) a lot of time in my Sophomore year at UConn, trying to understand him well enough to find holes in his theory. Not having either the IQ or advanced education accumulated, I didn't get very far. Einstein's thought experiments exploring how observers in different reference frames would perceive the same phenomenon, were valuable starting points for my own consideration of the time travel paradoxes in 'our' show. Feynman I learned about later, after the Challenger commission. I was aware that engineers at Morton-Thiokol had expressed reservations about the low temperature performance of the elastomer O-Rings, but were unable to impress their management with the seriousness of their concerns. Feynman got credit for clamping a piece of O-Ring in a C-clamp, and dunking it in his 32F ice water at the conference table while discussing the problem, then removing the clamp and showing everyone the "indent" that didn't go away. SEE! Another thing I liked about Feinman, was his irreverence for authority: he made a game of taunting security at Los Alamos, and even deduced the combinations for many of the lockable filing cabinets. I really loved his answer when asked how he was able to be so successful with women: "You have to ASK them". Something sooooo difficult for so many young techie types. I have to confess to not paying enough attention to my investments, something that is certainly much more important to a comfortable retirement than, say, a certain science-fiction television show. That was why your choice of heros impressed me. Thanks for reminding me: I NEED to do that. Care for a cup of coffee? <grins> " Coffee sounds nice. Einstein's curved space explanation for gravity made me wonder whether other forces could be expressed the same way. Never had the time to go into it. No doubt all these issues have been thoroughly vetted by the scientific community long ago. Feynman was very cool. I read about his bongo drums. (Heh!) In high school I really like physics because it was so intuitive. All the homework and test problems began with having an intuitive idea of some physical system and applying some math to get a solution to a question about it. I always could sit back after getting an answer and kind of eyeball my answer to see it made sense intuitively. My like for intuitive analysis was knocked for a loop later when I was reading up on quantum mechanics. I read that the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle had forced scientists to describe an electron's position using a probability function. The probability function would be an equation that was described as a Bessel function of the second kind (whatever that means). This apparently was an equation that mathematicians have known about for centuries, and its solutions are known to be discrete. I.e., the electron could only be at specific radii from the center of the nucleus. This leads to quantum mechanics. Well, I never liked this. I suppose it means the discreteness was always there, embedded within the presumption of the Uncertainty Principle. A logical consequence of it. And the math just lets us see the result. But to me its highly nonintuitive. Maybe my intuition is just not sophisticated enough. Anyway, I share your disengagement from certain areas of physics. Post reply Do you find this valuable?
TackDriver1956	5. RE: Steven A Cohen Feb 12 2009, 1:03 PM EST Is sugar and Very Vanilla Silk all-right? Our intuition is founded on our experience as beings of certain scale: size, velocity, temperature, etc. It's remarkable that some of us can adjust our intuition to develop a feel for phenomena that are so far outside our natural scale. High school, and even undergraduate physics had a difficult time holding my attention against more earthly pursuits, partly because I knew that things like friction were important, but weren't being taught. I missed the point of intentionally simplifying the problems so that we little minds could successfully deal with the mathematical models of classical mechanics. When I came back to these subjects later in life, they were more interesting because the basis of understanding was already there. Einstein didn't like quantum theory either. The funny thing is, if you think about little bits of it, it make sense that electrons should have quantized energy, if they only absorb or emit energy through quantized photons. But why should photon energy be quantized? Even if the velocity is fixed at C, the frequency, intuitively should be continuous. It's a good thing I didn't try to go any further. I do enjoy dusting off some of the old physics, and trying to solve some real world problem with it. I recently tried to prove that a particular rifle range in Connecticut could possibly be the source of stray bullets landing in a residential neighborhood on the other side of mountain ridge, about a mile away. With high school or college physics, neglecting air friction, no hits. When traditional ballistic software is used, they lose enough energy to air friction to fall sooner, and some "solutions" are possible. The REAL solution gets really ugly, because the drag function does unexpected things as the bullet slows from super-sonic to trans-sonic to sub-sonic velocities. Haven't mastered that part of the problem yet. Post reply Do you find this valuable?
TackDriver1956	6. RE: Steven A Cohen Feb 12 2009, 4:21 PM EST I just realized that the second paragraph in my 1:03 post sounds at odds with trying to find a flaw in Einstein's rationale for the upper speed limit of "C". It's just that I was convinced that I knew better... and leaving out things like frictional effects made the presentation seem dumbed down and uninteresting. Is that better? Post reply Do you find this valuable?
Dr._Allison_Cameron	7. RE: Steven A Cohen Feb 12 2009, 4:48 PM EST Sugar and Very Vanilla Silk would be perfect. Some of my friends decided that what they liked about physics, the intuitive analytical aspect, was more aptly some form of engineering. Pure physics started to wander off into a forest of math, leaving intuition behind. Simplification of problems so as to facilitate solutions resulted in reduced relevance to real world systems, as you pointed out. Engineering stayed with real physical systems, analyzing them and getting solutions. So far as your bullet problem goes, would there be any way to do an experiment? When the math gets too complicated, it ceases being useful so far as proving something to an average person. So what about an experiment? Like out in the open in a desert or someplace where no one would get hurt, then fire bullets and see where they land? I suppose one would need some way of seeing where they hit. Maybe infrared viewer from the side? Would need more than one person to do the whole thing. Or try varying the elevation with many shots so a pattern could be identified in the target area. Practically speaking, I would have hoped that shooters in a rifle range would be more careful than to have stray bullets become an issue. Post reply Do you find this valuable?
TackDriver1956	8. RE: Steven A Cohen Feb 12 2009, 9:09 PM EST Yep. You hit the nail right on the head... engineering is where I stayed. There are plenty of puzzles to be solved in the controlling of manufacturing and test equipment, that require a little intuitive understanding of most branches of physics, and some occasional number crunching when things don't seem to make sense. An experiment for the bullet problem (chuckle). I've thought about this... the safest thing to do would be to shoot from the impacted homes, back toward the rifle range (JOKE!) The Mythbusters tried something like that (straight up), and couldn't find the rifle bullets afterward. If I were getting paid for this, I would love to drive to Aberdeen or somewhere out West and make some tests. There is commercial software available that can model the drag function for modern bullet shapes. All it takes is some long range chronograph data to 'calibrate' the general drag curve to the specific bullet. The 'serious' ballisticians have radar chronographs. Once I have the drag model, adjusting for the firing angle (reduced drag with altitude and potential vs kinetic energy tradeoff) is pretty easy. What the commercial programs seem to lack, is the ability to compute the second, 'indirect fire' solution, where the bullet travels in a much higher arc: closer to straight up and down. This is the ONLY solution for the .50 caliber bullets found in this case, because in a normal 'direct fire' trajectory, the mountain is in the way. I really need to work up the nerve to ask the investigating state trooper if he’ll share the bullet weights, azimuth and elevation data he’s (presumably) gathered at impact sites, and compare it with the predictions I’ve made already. I should also talk to the defendant’s lawyer, and see if my efforts are worth them paying for. Could be a new line of consulting for me. What did you wind up studying & getting your degree in? Post reply Do you find this valuable?
TackDriver1956	9. RE: Steven A Cohen Feb 12 2009, 9:32 PM EST "Practically speaking, I would have hoped that shooters in a rifle range would be more careful than to have stray bullets become an issue." This is very true. When you look at the mountain behind the target, it's hard to believe that anything is getting over it. I proved to myself that it is possible. Being aware of that possibility makes you think differently about what is and is NOT a safe direction to fire a shot. There are specific rules to be followed in a formal match: where the rifle is pointed, when the ammunition is inserted, when the bolt is closed, when the safety is set to "fire". The rules have gotten stricter and better enforced in recent years. The guys I shoot service rifle matches with every month are VERY safety conscious. OTOH, Old timers with years of bad habits, and some police, who are only required to qualify once a year, are some of the least safe shooters. Informal target practice is probably the most lax environment. Fingers are not supposed to be on triggers unless sights are on the target, but I've seen a lot of old timers get all set to shoot with the muzzle high, and then bring it smoothly down on the target. That's how they were taught. The problem comes when someone fires a loud gun next to them and they twitch: OOPS. Off goes a bullet over the backstop. The range in question has installed barriers that prevent the shooters from raising guns above the targets, and I'm doing my part to make sure the folks I shoot with follow safe practices, and that they know those homeowners downrange are NOT crazy. Post reply Do you find this valuable?
Dr._Allison_Cameron	10. RE: Steven A Cohen Feb 12 2009, 10:26 PM EST "What did you wind up studying & getting your degree in?" My sincerest apologies, but I would rather not talk about my own specifics. Just trying to stay as anonymous as possible on the internet, you know. But I really enjoy our discussion, and I would like to hear more of your thoughts on this stuff. I see from your profile page that you've been around quite a bit and you've sure done a lot of things. Your experience must give you a different perspective on a lot of what we talk about on the wiki, too. Do you have any views on how the writers might tie up some of the loose ends? I've got my own ideas which I have put out in a bunch of threads, but I know there must be other ways of resolving all the questions. One of the biggest questions for me is why were there terminators sent to impede John Henry's development. There was an Ellison terminator and the pretzel girl terminator who might have been sent to kill Sherman. (Or to defend him?) In one of the previews to The Good Wound, we see Weaver with her arms configured as swords, and it looks like she might be rushing to defend John Henry. Against another terminator? If John Henry becomes Skynet, why would it send these terminators? Or, could they all be reprogrammed terminators sent by future John? No question its entertaining to watch the fights -- whoever Weaver will be fighting; Cromartie taking out Ellison terminator; and especially Cam fighting pretzel girl. But we're never told who sent them and why! We don't even know why Stark was hiding in the wall. If his plan was to kill the governor, then why? Chill, Allison. So, OK. Would you have any light to shed on this mud pit I find myself rolling around in? Post reply Do you find this valuable?
TackDriver1956	11. RE: Steven A Cohen Feb 13 2009, 8:44 AM EST "My sincerest apologies, but I would rather not talk about my own specifics. Just trying to stay as anonymous as possible on the internet, you know. But I really enjoy our discussion, and I would like to hear more of your thoughts on this stuff. I see from your profile page that you've been around quite a bit and you've sure done a lot of things. Your experience must give you a different perspective on a lot of what we talk about on the wiki, too. Do you have any views on how the writers might tie up some of the loose ends? I've got my own ideas which I have put out in a bunch of threads, but I know there must be other ways of resolving all the questions. One of the biggest questions for me is why were there terminators sent to impede John Henry's development. There was an Ellison terminator and the pretzel girl terminator who might have been sent to kill Sherman. (Or to defend him?) In one of the previews to The Good Wound, we see Weaver with her arms configured as swords, and it looks like she might be rushing to defend John Henry. Against another terminator? If John Henry becomes Skynet, why would it send these terminators? Or, could they all be reprogrammed terminators sent by future John? No question its entertaining to watch the fights -- whoever Weaver will be fighting; Cromartie taking out Ellison terminator; and especially Cam fighting pretzel girl. But we're never told who sent them and why! We don't even know why Stark was hiding in the wall. If his plan was to kill the governor, then why? Chill, Allison. So, OK. Would you have any light to shed on this mud pit I find myself rolling around in?" Allison, Leaving town for a few days. Thank 'gods' for DVR. Will catch up on Tues. A few quick guesses: 1. Pretzel was to defend Sherman against John Henry. (for who though?) Or maybe to kill him so that JH wouldn't have to? 2. Since there's a funeral, it's not a terminator. Perhaps Ellison sees the error of his ways? 3. Pretzel killed non-threat humans, therefore she's not a John Connor agent. 4. Stark: no clue. Would it really 'out' you to name your profession? Wish me good snow... Post reply Do you find this valuable?
Dr._Allison_Cameron	12. RE: Steven A Cohen Feb 13 2009, 4:36 PM EST I wish you a good trip and may you enjoy the best snow. Yeah, my profession. I shouldn't talk about it. You never know who's looking, eh? I hope you can watch the show live tonight. Post reply Do you find this valuable?

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