My life as a ...quite literally

As I wind up the penultimate page of Dr. Derman's "My life as a quant", I realize that he has not only come a full circle in his lifetime, but has brought me through one too. Completing a Phd from Columbia University in Particle Physics and then joining his alma mater, as a Prof. in Financial Engineering has been his reason for deja vu. In his book, he contests in the first few pages how while modeling in Physics one is playing against the Gods, who have a set of rules they do not change often, while in Finance, one has to play against God's creatures (humans), who move, make, or mud the market.

"Each universe should be consistent, but the actual financial and human world, unlike the world of matter, is going to be infintely more complex than any model we make of it.", writes Dr. Derman.

Well, most certainly my full circle comes with this phrase as I quite realize that in his book the initial concept has phoenix'ed in much the same way as his relationship with Columbia. And, yet it suddenly hits me, as if I was expected to only now understand the complete meaning of why my proud models can't explain the reality as well as the reality itself.

I search for an analogy and find an easy, convenient and yet inspiring one in the human body. How the involuntary motion, the heart beat, is like God itself and to a cave man trying to deduce this movement he discovers the Pulse running close to the palm... And when the same neanderthal searches and studies for ways and methods that can be successfully employed to predict / compute / evaluate/ and do all those things a model is supposed to, to guess what his neighbour is feeling, thinking, or acting - the voluntary motion, he fails miserably. At best, based on empirical data, behaviour of all neighbours that he has come across he can form an opnion or a judgement which is no close or no further from a hunch or a guess of the likely action his neighbour may make next. But since it is supported by data, it will eventually follow the route of credible wisdom, as put succinctly by Blake in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell - "If a fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise."