journal features

breezed through a test on risk finance

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-eight years and a million words

Toronto, 2015.10.28

I feel I did rather well on a test on risk financing tonight; in fact I think I over studied. When you walk out of a 90 minute exam at the 35 minute mark, perhaps yes you mis-spent some hours of review.

I'm enjoying the class, which is taught at the University of Toronto's school of continuing studies. I'm getting some of the gaps in my risk studies filled at a reasonably moderate expense, and a decent pace. Really do wish they would let go of some of the nonsense about "statistically significant sample sizes" and the supposed segregation of hazard from business risk. These are all mistakes, Otto; I looked them up.

rand()m quote

Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.

—Michael Crichton