Physics Envy

Electrifying the Doughnut: Simplified Visions of Sustainable Finance

Electrifying the Doughnut: Simplified Visions of Sustainable Finance

Reading Time: 30 min.

June 21 2023 marks the sixth annual #ShowYourStripes Day - a time when meteorologists and other climate communicators around the world raise awareness of our warming planet by displaying colorful visuals of climate change. The warming stripe graphics are representations of the change in temperature over the past 100+ years (here we use the global average). Each stripe represents the temperature averaged over a year. The stripes typically start around the year 1900 and finish in 2022.

Marking Pi Day 2021 With a Raspberry Pi Docker Image for OpenNPL

Marking Pi Day 2021 With a Raspberry Pi Docker Image for OpenNPL

We celebrate Pi Day 2021 releasing an ARM version of the openNPL platform that is suitable for the Raspberry Pi

Reading Time: 2 min.
Celebrating Pi Day 2021 Pi Day is celebrated every year on March 14th. The reason of course is that the day is denoted in some calendars as (3/14), which evokes of 3.14, the first three digits of “π”. A thin excuse maybe but sufficient for the true believers to join along! The occasion represents an annual opportunity for mathematics and science enthusiasts to recite the infinite charms of Pi, including its irrationality, to talk to friends and family about math and its uses, and, when everything else fails, simply eat pie.
Stress Testing of the Future - A view from 2031

Stress Testing of the Future - A view from 2031

What is the future of stress testing? We speculate on how stress testing might look like in 2031

Reading Time: 13 min.
What is the future of stress testing? To speculate on the future of Stress Testing we need first a basic definition what stress testing is. Broadly speaking, the goal of Stress Testing is to assess how a system would behave under adverse conditions that - while not the most likely outcome with the knowledge of today - are within the realm of the plausible. There are, broadly speaking, two types of stress testing: The Real stress testing version and Hypothetical stress testing version.
Taxonomy of Uncertainty

Taxonomy of Uncertainty

We review and synthesize into a taxonomy a number of related concepts and terms describing uncertainty, risk, randomness and model risk

Reading Time: 14 min.
Risk, Randomness, Uncertainty and other Ambiguous Terms Uncertainty versus Risk is a popular discussion topic among risk managers, especially after major risk management disasters. The debate can get really hairy and drift into deep philosophical areas about the nature of knowledge etc. Yet the significance of having an as clear as possible language toolkit around these terms should not be underestimated. Practical risk management typically shuns too deep excursions into the meaning of things, yet that is not quite compatible with the use of sophisticated methods and tools (such as a Risk Model ) that assumes an understanding of the scope and limitations of “knowledge”.
The Game of Life With Macroeconomic Stimulus

The Game of Life With Macroeconomic Stimulus

Agent-based models is a major class of simulation models, with many potential applications in economics and finance

Reading Time: 7 min.
Agent-Based Models The origins and early years According to Wikipedia an agent-based model (ABM) is ABM: class of computational models for simulating the actions and interactions of autonomous agents (both individual or collective entities such as organizations or groups) with a view to assessing their effects on the system as a whole. A cellular automaton is a particular class of ABM. It is a discrete dynamical model used and studied in a variety of fields: computer science, mathematics, physics, complexity science, theoretical biology among others.
Seeking clues for financial stability in quantum physics

Seeking clues for financial stability in quantum physics

Reading Time: 7 min.
Seeking clues for financial stability from quantum physics How physicists discovered why the world is stable Physics is one of those remarkably successful branches of science that have helped shape the modern era. Let your gaze drop on any man made gadget in your surroundings and its likely that its working principles go back to a fundamental discovery in physical science that dates back no more than two hundred years or so.
If banks were airlines

If banks were airlines

Reading Time: 3 min.
If banks were airlines Ever since the scary turbulence of the Great Financial Crisis it has been instructive and illuminating to compare the travails of the financial industry with the state of other industries, especially those more down to earth, also known as real world industries. The automotive industry was particularly handy for good analogies: Almost all of us have first-hand experience with the successes and failures of risk management when it concerns cars and driving.
Fintech, embrace your inner regulator!

Fintech, embrace your inner regulator!

Reading Time: 2 min.
Fintech, embrace your inner regulator 2017 is shaping to be the year of #regtech, aka new technology startups setting up digital shop to help the financial services sector cope with its heavy regulatory burden. But what is regulation? Why is it a burden and how does it relate to real risks and risk management? The narratives around financial regulation have been, for some time, completely dominated by the so-called compliance perspective.
The mystery of the collapsed cathedral

The mystery of the collapsed cathedral

Reading Time: 6 min.
The mystery of the collapsed cathedral You walk to the center of an old city and you see its glorious cathedral lying in ruins. What in the world has happened here? Your investigative instinct goes into overdrive. This is not supposed to happen. Not in peacetime anyway. How can it be that this magnificent edifice, after gracing the town’s central square for who knows how many centuries, is now little more than a rubble pile in the center of town?
The periodic table of risk elements

The periodic table of risk elements

Reading Time: 5 min.
The periodic table of risk elements You know the periodic table of elements, even if you flunked your science courses! It is the large colorful and blocky table that hanged on every school’s classrooms before becoming yet another mobile app. The periodic table is one of the early and iconic achievements of science. It lists all the pure chemical elements found in nature, the building blocks of all possible material substances.
Its all about balance these days!

Its all about balance these days!

Reading Time: 1 min.
In our personal lives, it is the balance between work and life, or the dreadful weight balance. In the professional sphere it might be the balance between debt and equity in the financial industry, or the balance between convenience and citizen privacy in the new tech industry, or the welfare of the many balanced against the property of the few, or finally the geopolitical balance of power of different peoples Balance ensures sustainability as it helps steer away from the risks that lurk at the extremes.