Serving the Quantitative Finance Community

 
User avatar
Cuchulainn
Posts: 20254
Joined: July 16th, 2004, 7:38 am
Location: 20, 000

Re: World Competitiveness Rankings

March 20th, 2019, 9:31 pm

The seventies were a dismal period in UK and Ireland, you couldn't buy decent cigars, wine, and only instant coffee. In Moscow you could buy a Cuban cigar for 1 rouble.
 
User avatar
Cuchulainn
Posts: 20254
Joined: July 16th, 2004, 7:38 am
Location: 20, 000

Re: World Competitiveness Rankings

March 21st, 2019, 10:27 am

"Happiness" is a fad introduced by Benjamin Franklin. An alternative metric is "Wellness"  For example, Oman comes in at #2.

https://muscatdaily.com/Archive/Oman/Om ... -list-5den

Is there a correlation bettween happiness and obesity?
 
User avatar
Cuchulainn
Posts: 20254
Joined: July 16th, 2004, 7:38 am
Location: 20, 000

Re: World Competitiveness Rankings

March 22nd, 2019, 3:00 pm

Most scenic airports. 
I used to do my interval training on that beach. There's also the wreck of a Spanish Armada ship at the end of the runway. On a given day there might be 10 people on the beach.
https://www.rte.ie/lifestyle/travel/201 ... cond-year/
 
User avatar
katastrofa
Posts: 7440
Joined: August 16th, 2007, 5:36 am
Location: Alpha Centauri

Re: World Competitiveness Rankings

March 22nd, 2019, 5:06 pm

"Happiness" is a fad introduced by Benjamin Franklin. An alternative metric is "Wellness"  For example, Oman comes in at #2.

https://muscatdaily.com/Archive/Oman/Om ... -list-5den

Is there a correlation bettween happiness and obesity?
I think it's about the quality of bread they bake in the country, which might be the confounder.
 
User avatar
Cuchulainn
Posts: 20254
Joined: July 16th, 2004, 7:38 am
Location: 20, 000

Re: World Competitiveness Rankings

March 29th, 2019, 11:11 am

Now, whiskey, the distillery is down the road and I get a complimentary bottle each summer.

https://teelingwhiskey.com/2018/03/teel ... es-awards/
 
User avatar
Cuchulainn
Posts: 20254
Joined: July 16th, 2004, 7:38 am
Location: 20, 000

Re: World Competitiveness Rankings

March 29th, 2019, 11:19 am

 
User avatar
Cuchulainn
Posts: 20254
Joined: July 16th, 2004, 7:38 am
Location: 20, 000

Re: World Competitiveness Rankings

April 12th, 2019, 11:00 am

conclusion? smaller is better (bureaucracy reduction, efficiency) ? if they included even smaller nations such as Monaco and the Vatican I suspect they would be on top? Pope very happy?
The educational systems in the West are in crisis.
 
User avatar
bearish
Posts: 5188
Joined: February 3rd, 2011, 2:19 pm

Re: World Competitiveness Rankings

April 12th, 2019, 12:47 pm

conclusion? smaller is better (bureaucracy reduction, efficiency) ? if they included even smaller nations such as Monaco and the Vatican I suspect they would be on top? Pope very happy?
The educational systems in the West are in crisis.
How does said crisis manifest itself?
 
User avatar
Cuchulainn
Posts: 20254
Joined: July 16th, 2004, 7:38 am
Location: 20, 000

Re: World Competitiveness Rankings

April 12th, 2019, 1:47 pm

conclusion? smaller is better (bureaucracy reduction, efficiency) ? if they included even smaller nations such as Monaco and the Vatican I suspect they would be on top? Pope very happy?
The educational systems in the West are in crisis.
How does said crisis manifest itself?
1. 3-4 day school week
2. A la carte system. Decay.
3. The Steve Jobs schools are defunct
4. Where can you find home-grown physicists and mathematicians?
5. Dumbing down.
6. Socialism of education.
 
User avatar
Cuchulainn
Posts: 20254
Joined: July 16th, 2004, 7:38 am
Location: 20, 000

Re: World Competitiveness Rankings

April 13th, 2019, 12:13 am

7. And we'rs going back to the 50s; no $$ no education.
 
User avatar
katastrofa
Posts: 7440
Joined: August 16th, 2007, 5:36 am
Location: Alpha Centauri

Re: World Competitiveness Rankings

April 13th, 2019, 12:17 am

@"4. Where can you find home-grown physicists and mathematicians?"

I worked a one London uni with 3 such home-grown species (Oxbridge). They were the dumbest people I've met in my whole career. Still, the British science needed "faces", and they cooperated - unlike those who fought wars with against scientific bullshit. Cheating and corruption is all you've got in science these days.
 
User avatar
Cuchulainn
Posts: 20254
Joined: July 16th, 2004, 7:38 am
Location: 20, 000

Re: World Competitiveness Rankings

April 13th, 2019, 2:13 pm

Education has become a debt instrument. With all its consequences..

I worked in a university in the beginning in NL. 200 maths students (Dutch) in year 1. These days you wouldn't see that for the whole country. 
// Morvigor's bassist is a pure mathematician.
 
User avatar
bearish
Posts: 5188
Joined: February 3rd, 2011, 2:19 pm

Re: World Competitiveness Rankings

April 13th, 2019, 4:49 pm

Perhaps the depth of thinking has shallowed since you hung out with Plato and Socrates in the good old days, but from a very narrow perspective conflating time, place and system, I can say with complete confidence that the level of study undertaken and mastered by my two daughters in high school substantially outstripped what I ever attempted at the same age. And I may well have (wildly unsubstantiated claim to follow) graduated with the highest high school GPA in the country in my year. I know I graduated with the best (it was actually the lowest, but low was good) GPA in my university five years later, and in my year of acceptance that was one of the couple of hardest schools in Norway to get into based on the standardized entrance scoring system used at the time. This is not about me. I'm merely pointing out that these claims of great decay in Western education either happened a couple of generations ago (so that I suck, too), or they do not hold up all that well to scrutiny on the high end. 
 
User avatar
Cuchulainn
Posts: 20254
Joined: July 16th, 2004, 7:38 am
Location: 20, 000

Re: World Competitiveness Rankings

April 13th, 2019, 7:10 pm

I see it around me. In all walks of life. Plagiarism is rife.

Probably you + family went to elite schools?

I'm not sure what jumping through GPA  hoops tells us in general.

// Greek was not my thing; I was more into Latin so that I could understand what the clergy was shouting at me, I was more into Livy and Tacitus.
 
User avatar
Cuchulainn
Posts: 20254
Joined: July 16th, 2004, 7:38 am
Location: 20, 000

Re: World Competitiveness Rankings

April 13th, 2019, 7:42 pm

Forgot to say: I supervised > 80 MSc/MFE students from over ze whole world in recent years.

Not to mention training courses since 1990.

So, I do have (some) historical data.