Mon 28Jan08: Computational Finance

I found myself sitting in Lecture Theatre 3, Exchange Building just before the Computational Finance class starts. Me and the rest already missed the first lecture (totally not our fault!) and therefore I think we should pay more attention. Feeling anxious on how difficult the module will be. Indeed when we took the lecture notes that looks familiar to us, but there are some other terms that we have never heard of. There are some ‘funny’ and ‘complicated’ formulas involved. Judging from the lecture note itself, I could be pretty sure that he divides the lecture notes based on topics. So the last week’s topic, the Money Market, will still proceed for today’s lecture.

Let the lecture begins as the clock ticks at 10am sharp. When I heard the first few sentences of the lecturer, Dr Weimin Liu, I told myself, “OH MY GODNESS!!”. I tried to understand him, tried to listen to him. But it’s very hard! And I’m starting to wonder: ‘IS HE SPEAKING MANDARIN OR ENGLISH??’
Looking around the class after 10-15 minutes, half of the class look so serious and they seem to pay attention. While the rest, I’m quite sure, already gave up to listen to him, not exceptionally me.

For the entire lecture, I’ve been letting myself digesting from lecture notes, hopefully I could get more clues rather than listening to him solely. I tried to reread from the beginning, the part that we’ve missed from last week’s lecture. I failed. Even it took me 5 minutes to really understand the notation or variables that he used for a simple one, such as “Simple Rate = B_T,t = 1 / [1 + r_s(T-t)]” What’s t and T? How could it differ? Is this the one that I knew, or something else? And this is even the starting, the next ones, are the Discount Rate, Discretely Compounded Rate, and Continuously Compounded Rate. Of course they are not new things, but when all of them do have T, t, and m, you can’t help saying ‘W-H-A-T?’ And that’s one part of the last week’s lecture.

Today’s lecture starts from Forward-Forward Rate. While explaining he’s been using all those ‘distinctive’, ‘unique’ variables that I swear I could hardly understand. This is a NIGHTMARE!!

I still remember during my first year second semester, where the whole class complaints about Dr Ee Mong Shan’s (Business Finance lecturer) communication skill, as she just came back from Japan and didn’t speak English fluently. She made loads of grammatical errors, and some of the pronunciations are wrong as well. At that time I seriously thought that she really needs to improve her English, if not it will be hard for her to get respect from her students.

BUT NOW, AT THIS POINT? Dr Liu made Dr Ee as if SHE WERE NATIVE IN ENGLISH. And I pity myself to have him teaching the similar subject, in Finance area, something I have interest in most… ;'(