The price has to go up anyway, that's what happens when demand increases, it's nothing to do with HFT. Large block trades like this will often be arrange over the counter (OTC) or on dark pools, so the fund purchasing the shares will get a fixed price and it's up to the market maker to deal with the execution risk in the open market.
> (This is kinda funny b/c they were sorta conceived to emulate Oxford and Cambridge - which as I understand are all about he well-rounded "liberal arts eduction")
Undergrad programs at Oxford and Cambridge are actually very specialized compared to American degrees. Students typically don't take any classes from outside their primary course. While some courses are broader than a typical major at an American university (e.g "Natural Sciences" at Cambridge or "Philosophy, Politics and Economics" at Oxford) only a small number mix the sciences and humanities, and even then only in certain approved combinations (e.g. at Oxford you can do {Mathematics,CS,Physics} with Philosophy, but not {Chemistry,Biology} with Philosophy).
> What I am questioning is the extreme prevalence of travel in off-time for some people for whom travel seems to be the only way to spend holidays.
For myself, it's simply that vacation days are too scarce to waste on anything I could feasibly do during the evening or on weekends. It might be nice to take time off for the activities you mentioned, but it's not essential, I could do them at the weekend. Each year I have 240 working, 100 weekend, 10 public holidays and 15 vacation days. I have some "required travel" that uses vacation days too (e.g. I'm taking three days off next week to go to a friend's wedding and visit family), so I make sure I maximise my "pure travel" with the remaining days.
Beyond that the differentiators are working hours/flexibility and healthcare. A household in Texas might have quite a good life in many respects with an income of 60k/year, but do they get 6 weeks off, flexible working hours (useful if you have kids), and paid maternity/paternity leave that lasts more than a few weeks? In the US if you want/need that extra time away from work you might need to take time of work or go part time, causing a drop in income and perhaps company sponsored healthcare, but in many European these things are available by default to fulltime employees.
Python is currently making inroads in finance, both Bank of America and JP Morgan have large projects involving it. I've worked on one of them, and like you I'm unusure if it's a good long-term plan, though I don't have experience with large codebases in other languages. Performance is an issue and navigating a large Python codebase is tricky. One thing that doesn't help is that many of the developers come from Java/C#/C++ and pick up Python quickly but with "unpythonic" habits, the code ends up being almost as verbose as Java but with none of the type safety.
Their FAQ (http://www.codenameone.com/faq.html) claims that it is possible, though a little complicated (and they'll only provide support if you're on their enterprise plan).
A few years ago I heard a story from an acquaintance working at an online spread betting company. One senior figure suggested that they should actively bet against their worst performing customers rather than hedging, they discovered pretty quickly that this wasn't a good idea!
That's definitely not the case in the UK. For example, the guidelines for applying for Economics at Cambridge state:
"The Faculty does not have standard requirements for subjects other than Maths: in particular A level Economics, though useful, is not a prerequisite."
(FWIW I did mathematics as an undergrad but I considered CS and spoke to CS faculty at various university open days, from what I remember they all considered maths to be the only essential A level for admission.)
I recently started reading http://www.learnprolognow.org/ and the first few chapters have been excellent. There are exercises and practical sections at the end of each chapter too (unfortunately I haven't had time to look at them in detail yet).
My understanding was that Julia gives you the option to write loops explicitly but it doesn't stop you using vector and matrix operations when appropriate, so I'm curious if there are any particular operations that its array implementation are missing?
Thanks for the reply. I get your point that the initiative and aptitude are the starting point, but as you mentioned, looking for "proof" of ability is very tricky, particularly for people without much experience. Of course had I known I would be unemployed for 6+ months at the offset I could have planned a project that ticked lots of boxes (Django frontend, NumpPy, SQLAlchemy, PyMongo etc. etc.). I love the idea of Hacker School and wish I'd known about it at the time, I'm sure it would have helped me build a portfolio of work. While I did have some side projects I'd spend a lot of time learning to match a job spec or recruiters recommendations only to find the interviewer fixating on something else, other times I'd be strung along ("we'll be looking to hire in a month or so, why not brush up on X in the meantime?") and then the job would disappear (cash-flow issues, change in priorities, new CTO decides to scrap Python and rewrite in node.js ;)
Ultimately I'd rather be programming. My current job is OK and I'll stick at it for now, I owe my boss for taking a chance on me and they'd struggle if I left before the end of the year (we are a small team and in the middle of switching accounting systems and finalizing an acquisition). I do like the fact that I get exposed to a range of business issues, as my previous job in the insurance industry was a little more technical but very narrow in scope. Long-term it probably doesn't suit me (though it might be different at another company), I've automated some tasks in Access/VBA but there is a line between finance and IT (partially outsourced or contractors) and I'm expected to use systems rather than improve them. At least I can at least work on some longer-term programing projects in my free time, but it's frustrating to be left thinking "maybe next year", rather than living in the moment!
In my experience most companies aren't interested in "initiative and aptitude". They are generally unwilling to look at people without a few years of experience already.
I moved to NYC and started job-hunting in early 2011. I didn't have a background in software development but I had programmed in VBA for 18 months (pricing insurance), used R for my statistics masters degree project and had been dabbling in Python for around 5 years (all self-taught).
Through direct applications, headhunters and networking at various meetup events I hunted for tech and tech/finance jobs for about eight months. While things would sometimes look promising, if usually came down to "we're really looking for someone with a bit more experience in X". I did manage to find some freelance work (for a Python/Django web startup) but they decided that rather than another backend programmer they needed someone who could do frontend development and system administration...
After leaving NYC my sister got a call, "is your brother still looking for a job in New York?", and I ended up back here working as an accountant. I didn't have any experience in accounting either (though I had taken some classes in the past) but my new boss was happy to bring me in on a three month contract and see how things worked out (I got a permanent offer after a month and a half).
I don't see a huge difference between this and music/movie piracy. I feel it's down to the financial/commercial nature of the infringement and also the scale. I think this is fairly consistent with the legal viewpoint, if the copyright owner was suing for damages what could they reasonably claim?
It's one thing for somebody to copy a DVD for a few friends or family members, worse if they put it on BitTorrent, and worse still if they start selling bootleg copies.
I don't think there would be such a big outcry over this if it was a personal website getting a few hundred hits a month, or even if it was a moderately successful non-commercial project. Curebit had already received funding from Y-combinator and I assume their team were working on it full time, so in my opinion that's rather different to somebody cutting a few corners on a weekend project.
The variability in UK university courses is pretty extreme. I have three degrees: a bachelors in mathematics ("pass"), a bachelors in accountancy (2:1) and a masters in statistics ("pass", though I averaged a "merit" I missed out because I was inconsistent), all at different universities. While I couldn't even manage a lowly third for my mathematics undergrad I worked far harder for it than the other two, despite the fact that it was the only one I studied for full-time.
Before starting the masters in statistics I took some undergraduate (first/second year) maths/stats courses at the same university (while still studying for the accountancy degree and working 35 hrs/week) and the exams and assignments were probably easier than anything I saw in the first two weeks of my maths degree. Based on my performance on those courses and what I saw of the 3rd year undergrad courses (the masters students shared one with the undergrads, though we had a different exam) I would have cruised to a first without breaking a sweat, a pretty different experience to when I was struggling to pass my degree at all!
It does make it almost impossible to judge anybody's degree and grade unless you are already familiar with the course, the toughest courses are genuinely difficult but the easiest courses are a walk in the park for anyone of reasonable ability.
I've heard that even at top universities in China there are trends among the subjects that don't really exist at the likes of Cambridge, MIT and Stanford.
For example it might be that CS is currently more popular than maths/ physics/engineering, as a result all most top students (including high scorers in the math or physics olympiads) will apply for CS at university regardless of their interest in the subject. Those with the very best performance on the entrance exams will be accepted for CS at Peking and Tsinghau, the next tier of students would have a choice between math/physics/eng. there or CS at a 2nd tier university, and other students between math/physics/eng. at a 2nd tier university or CS at a 3rd tier university.
On top of that the popular subjects will shift with time, so not only is it hard to judge a student's motivation but you might think that on paper someone is a good student because they were accepted for CS, but perhaps at that time CS was picking up students rejected from engineering.
The app store version is $25, but the desktop version is free. There's also a free web app that can be used from handheld devices with internet access and a free Android app. You can sync across multiple devices via the web app.
It studied the links between the practice habits and attainment levels of violinists at the Music Academy of West Berlin. They concluded that practice was the dominant factor in attainment and there were no individuals who's "talent" would make up for reduced practice.
Of course other factors (e.g. talent, quality of teaching) could have affected admissions to the academy in the first place, but the studying suggests that these are not significant once a certain level has been achieved.
This was mentioned in Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers" which mentions other studies including the birthday distribution of professional ice hockey players (clustered towards the start of the academic year) that suggest that practice is more significant than genetic ability.
It doesn't surprise me that learning from movies and the internet would make you more proficient than someone who learnt by living in the UK. When people are forced to speak a language that they do not know well they often end up reinforcing bad habits. Once someone has developed bad pronunciation or inadvertently trained themselves to ignore certain grammatical features it takes a lot of effort to correct the habits. Of course a committed learner can offset this to some degree, but most immigrants aren't willing to put in the effort and are only partially aware of the mistakes they are making. After three years they then speak in much the same way as they did after six months, but with a larger vocabulary.
It's a tricky question and there are far more practical things to know than current affairs, e.g. customs and taboos, language, currency etc.
For example, I've met people (American and others) who weren't aware that the UK hasn't switched to the euro. I once pointed this out to two surprised Americans on a flight to London - when you are a few hours from landing this is more useful than knowing the prime minister's name!
Beyond knowledge and ignorance (there are certainly ignorant Brits too) there may be a difference in attitude which sometimes comes across as ignorance. I'm relocating from London to NYC in just over a week so it will be interesting to experience the differences, I've heard that despite being quite cosmopolitan NYC is generally a little more inward looking.
Edit: As Harryh said, large mutual fund managers believe that HFT allows them to get better prices for their customers: http://www.cnbc.com/2014/04/25/vanguard-chief-defends-high-f...