From the OC Register:
Another more detailed view of the complex issues between Wall Street and the world of financial simulations created by physicists is found in the New York Times best-seller, “The Physics of Wall Street,” by our own UC Irvine professor, James Owen Weatherall. In it he describes the arrival of the Physics Ph.D.s, the quantitative analysts, or “quants,” onto the Wall Street scene. They create, for example, highly complex simulations of derivatives, or contracts known as collateralized debt obligations, not fully understood by most, neither the traders nor the creators of the simulations that put such contracts together.

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