I think this post complements the "How Effective are Technical Interviews" post that was on HN recently. A CS curriculum definitely prepares you for the theoretical questions asked in a technical interview, however, neither a CS degree nor a technical interview give you a real sense of how strong that person is at development.
I don't think this problem indicates the usefulness of a CS degree. Instead, I think it says that the only real way to learn how to program is to program.
Most of us probably go to these sites and browse for interesting Computer Science/Engineering courses which can be useful but, what do people think about the value of this for other subjects?
I checked out Open Yale Courses after reading this article and while I was interested in courses such as "Listening to Music" and "Death", I didn't see much practical value in them nor would I have the patience to sit through 20+ of these lectures in my free time.
Your points suggest that it's not the technical skill of CS graduates that are lacking rather, the mental attitudes and mindsets are not there. While school can be an amazing resource, I'm not sure that any university is structured to teach its students to be passionate or to consistantly over-deliver on quality.
"Even if each individual algorithm makes perfect sense, collectively they obey an emergent logic—artificial intelligence, but not artificial human intelligence. It is, simply, alien, operating at the natural scale of silicon, not neurons and synapses. We may be able to slow it down, but we can never contain, control, or comprehend it"
I can see algorithms being used to automate decision making in almost every other industry, not just Wall St. It's both scary and exciting to see what happens with the resulting "emergent intelligence".
The systems dynamics folks point out that systems with more rapid feedback often have more variability.
The classic example is a car dealership deciding to order cars from the factory. When should they be ordered, and how many should be ordered?
Suppose they decide that every day they place orders based on the 7 day moving average. Then they get a busy day and over-order for a week. That's an expensive mistake.
Next they decide to shrink the window to 3 days (more rapid feedback). Now after another busy day they find stocks dropping precipitously and order big to make up, follow by drops, followed by big orders. In an attempt to stabilise the system, they've made it worse.
The modern stock market has extremely short feedback times, on the order of microseconds. When a feedback loop forms on the market it can spiral out of control within seconds and minutes -- hence the 'flash crash'.
Two ways to deal with this might be to develop some kind of balancing feedback loop (for example, higher prices for more trades-per-second, or a progressive price for trade based on delta with the last trade) or to reduce the feedback rate. An economics blogger I host, Nicholas Gruen (you may know of him as Australia's Gov 2.0 inquiry leader), has suggested just that:
The systems dynamics folks point out that systems with more rapid feedback often have more variability.
You've got systems dynamics folks completely backwards. Smaller, more frequent controls tend to stabilized systems, not make them unstable. A simple example we've all seen: take a stable ODE. Now try to discretize it - if you are unlucky or uncareful, your discrete approximation can easily blow up exponentially.
The example you provide is different - you are describing two different control strategies, one of which fails to correct for noise (and note: any HFT who makes this mistake loses money FAST). If you made orders every day based on the 7-day moving average, it would be better than making orders once per week based on the 7 day moving average.
This is exactly what we saw with the flash crash - there was a large exogenous shock and the system self-corrected within minutes.
"Richard made people feel like a child does, when a grown-up first treats him as an adult. He was never afraid of telling the truth, and however foolish your question was, he never made you feel like a fool."
I don't know much about Feynman but the combination of his brilliance and his popularity has always intrigued me. Surely we can assimilate some of Feynman's charm.
I don't think this problem indicates the usefulness of a CS degree. Instead, I think it says that the only real way to learn how to program is to program.