Paul Wilmott Introduces Quantitative Finance
paulwilmottintroducesquantitativefinance
An “Introduction” to anything is going to alienate half the readers. Why? Well, of necessity it is going to compress large topics, simply summarize complex topics, and leave whole swaths of material untouched. Most complaint reviews here fall roughly in to one or more of those buckets.
Paul Wilmott Introduces Quantitative Finance
Let’ face some facts: finance is a huge field of inquiry; mathematics is a huge field of inquiry; practical execution is a huge topic in itself (see the offerings of excellent books on Excel (Walkenbach, Benninga) and C++ (Joshi) and VBA (pick one)). An introduction of the intersections of these topics is no small area of inquiry. I stress using AMAZON’s “look inside” feature for a table of contents rather than repeat the litany of topics, but major issues like risk, random, returns, and standard methods are all covered in a fine first approximation.
So how well does Paul Wilmott do? The answer is not bad. This is a great first book to use with folks crossing over to quantitative finance from other areas (Theology in my case), or for folks who will work and talk with quants but not be one themselves. It will probably appear frustratingly simple to math or engineering majors, but this is an *introduction* and believe me, the heavy lifting comes latter.
As a teaching text, the lack of exercises is a frustrating, but the CDROM has lots of fun spreadsheets with simple built in macros that make practical lecturing a breeze.
Wilmott’s style is light, and he does make some logical leaps that can look sloppy but are transparently obvious to folks like him (trained in math), but it is often difficult to know what others don’t know and explain without over explaining. Any author has to pick where to compress explanations and no one is going to be completely pleased with all of where Wilmott squeezes. Still, with a minimum bit of extra effort (you are sitting at a computer reading this, and Google Scholar is about two clicks away) anything that isn’t clear can be found in an expanded technical address at Wolfram or other helpful sites.
This book is also a great filter. My students who complain it is too easy I move quickly along. Those who still don’t get it I steer towards careers in financial sales, those that are lulled into a false sense of power I hand them Shreve to invoke humble silence.
In short, this is an admirable work for its purpose: an *introduction* to a vast, complex, and growing field. The perfect book to discover the field while drinking a beer. Just don’t let the beer talk you into thinking you’ve mastered the subject with this book alone, and you’ll be fine.
Paul Wilmott Introduces Quantitative Finance
