June 27th, 2010, 7:53 pm
QuoteOriginally posted by: KackToodles the question is: is "quant" a science in the same way? Not! I think that even the quantitative finance rely on model assumption, the non arbitrage principle to name one. After that obviously each science is a mix of "true" model and "fit". It is quite rare that you have the theory before the experiment, especially in physic. For example relativity was developped to explain the invariance of the speed of light measure by Michelson, quantum mechanics (the successor of the Bohr model of the atom) was developped at the origin to explain the emission lines in the spectrum of some excited gases. Einstein invented the concept of photon to explain the black body thermal radiation and the concept of phonons to explain the heat capacity of cristal solids. The famous Newton law for gravity was discovered by fitting the trajectory of the planets. There are very few postulates in physic such as the invariance, the reproductibility and so on.Most of quant I know say "You have luck, you bloody physicist because you can reproduce your experiment, we CAN'T reproduce the market !". this point is false because it is barely impossible to reproduce all the initial conditions of a system and there is even worse for people like me who study rare events. For example a lightning or a supernova explosion ? How do you want to reproduce that !The main difference for me between physics and quantitative finance is that in your world, the "reality" reacts to the model. I mean that if you developp a new model which makes a revolution in the world of traders, all of them will use it and so finally the market will evolve since all the orders would follow your model which was not the case before you developped it .