Everything goes here Flashcards
when is the axial age said to have occurred - why was it called that, and why is it so significant
The Axial Age is generally regarded as a period of time between 800 BCE and 200 BCE.
That means it occured over a period of 600 years.
The Axial Age is significant because it saw the emergence of many of the world’s major religions and philosophical schools of thought, such as **Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, **and the Abrahamic religions of Judaism,
While Christianity, and Islam came later, since they are off-shoots of Judaism, they can be said to be Axial age religions.
Socrates and the buddha - time line and when they lived
They lived at around the same time - and might have been contemporaries - the difference, if any between the time they lived might be a few decades, but they could have been alive at the same time. There is no evidene though they either was aware of the other. Buddha did die before Socrates rose to any kind of fame or regard, so it’s probably not possible Buddha would have heard of him, but Socrates never mentioned him either, to our knowledge. Niether did Plato.
A list of the major religions that arose during the Axial age
- Confucianism - 5th century BCE
- Taoism - 4th century BCE
- Buddhism - 5th century BCE
- Hinduism - 5th century BCE
- Zoroastrianism - 6th century BCE
- Judaism - 1st millennium BCE, significant developments in the 6th century BCE
- Christianity - 1st century CE, with roots in Jewish traditions that emerged during the Axial Age
- Islam - 7th century CE, with roots in the monotheistic traditions that emerged during the Axial Age
- Greek philosophy - 5th-4th century BCE
Artistole’s definition of Rhetoric
“the faculty of observing in any giving situation, the available means of persuasion.”
Explaination of ontology:
- metaphysics
- and information science/computer science
Ontology is essentially the attempt to classify things. Metaphysical ontology would refer to questions of “what is the basic fundamental nature of reality” and how does that fundamental nature relate to other parts of that reality.
As an example- the ancient greek atomist believed that everything was made of indivisibly small atoms. And a rock was a bunch of atoms strung together. The way the things that exist relate to each other - their “ordering” is what’s captured in the word ontology. Conversely, Plato believed that there was a world of “forms” that was the most fundamental thing,
- Ontology in computer science or information science refers to how knowledge relates to each other. The catagories, or subcatagories of knowledge in a particular domain would be the onotology of that domain.
- The metaphysical vs information science applications of the word are related in the sense that each attempt to classify the order of things.
In terms of metaphysics - how basic things turn into less basic things and how they are connected. Whereas the same is done in information science, except for knowledge.
Google lecture of John Searle,
The terms subjectivity and objectivity have to be understood in different senses.
- epistemic objectivity
- epistemic subjectivity
- ontological objectvity
- ontologoical subjectivity
The meaning of the word Semantics - with respect to linguistics and computer programs.
In linguistics, semantics refers to the study of meaning in language. It involves examining how words, phrases, and sentences convey meaning, and how the meaning of language is shaped by context, cultural factors, and other linguistic features.
For example, in the sentence “The cat is on the mat”, semantics would involve understanding the meaning of each word in the sentence, as well as the relationships between the words and the overall message that the sentence conveys.
Semantics in linguistics is different from its use in the context of a computer program. In computer science, semantics refers to the meaning or interpretation of computer code, and it involves understanding how a computer program executes, how data is stored and manipulated, and how different components of a program interact to produce desired outputs.
For example, in a computer program that calculates the sum of two numbers, semantics would involve understanding how the program processes and interprets the input data, how it performs the necessary calculations, and how it generates the correct output.
In summary, semantics in linguistics refers to the study of meaning in language, while semantics in computer science refers to the meaning or interpretation of computer code. While the two fields share some similarities in their focus on meaning and interpretation, they are distinct and involve different methods and approaches to understanding meaning in their respective contexts.
Synopsis of John Searle’s contention that (current) computers can’t possibly be conscious, or even thinking machines
He points out that programs are entirely syntactical. They manipulate specific functions according to instructions, and render an output. However, they have no semantics at all. To the outside observer, there is a “simulation” of intelligence, and an semantic “understanding” by the program is implied.
*“Simluation [of consciousness] isn’t duplication [of consciousness]”
*“Syntax is not semantics.” *
He refers to this kind of intelligence as “observer dependant” intelligence - i.e. the quality of intelligence is infered onto the program by a conscious observer. This is different from an** “observer independant”** intelligence, which a human (or a dog) might have, because the quality of intelligence doesn’t depend on an external observer looking at the output of such a being and then inferring an “intelligent” operation.
- Essentially, the fact that current computers are entirely syntactical - that they can do computations without “understanding” the computation is the heart of the argument . He uses the “chinese room” thought experiment to illustrate the notion of an entirely syntactical program - a human who doesn’t understand chinese, could use a algorithim to answer a question in chinese as long as the program “shows” him how to do it. The human will be able to output the correct answer, without ever “understanding” any of the Chinese characters he is manipulating.
- This implies that the current architexture of computing, which is entirely syntactical, if changed, would allow for a consciousness to be created - but current computing only has this syntactical mechanism of doing computation.
- He also argues that there is nothing, in principle, preventing us from creating artificial consciousness, but that it would be critical to understand how it occurs in us and replicate the same processes in the machine/program. He disagrees that it could come about by an “accident” of computational complexity.
BTFP program
Bank Term Funding Program
Definition of “Term” - with respect to finance
The length of time that a loan or a financial instrument remains outstanding
what is underwriting mean?
What does it mean to underwrite a corporate bond?
Term from insurance world. The “assessment and pricing of risk” - when a corporate bond offering is “underwritten” - the bank doing the underwriting assesses the risk of the bond (going into default), and bases the interest rate on that risk. Usually they just outright buy the bond from the corporations and then sell it on wards for a mark up
where are corporate bonds usually bought and sold?
A substantial portion of these bonds are bought/sold on OTC markets which include broker-dealer networks like Bloomberg of MartketAxess
What is a Spread, and what is NIM?
Definition of credit risk, and duration risk
Credit risk: the risk of the borrower not paying the loan back
Duration risk: the risk that the rise in interest rates will cause the price of a given bond to fall;
difference b/w ETF and mutual funds.
Pythagorus and ontological objectivity
He discovered ontologically objective truth in math. This was a big breakthrough for the Greeks, many of home set out to expand the metaphysical ontologies.
relationship between bond yields, bond prices, and when people are buying and selling
difference between Total Yield on Bonds and Flat Yields or income yields
The “total yield on bonds” and “flat yield” are two different ways of calculating the yield or return on investment from a bond.
The total yield on bonds is the overall return an investor can expect from a bond over its entire life, including both the interest payments and any capital gains or losses at the time of maturity. It takes into account the bond’s face value, the price paid for the bond, and any changes in market conditions that may affect its value over time. This yield is also known as the “yield to maturity” or “internal rate of return.” and a third name is “gross redemption yield”
On the other hand, the flat yield is simply the fixed rate of interest that the bond pays each year, expressed as a percentage of the bond’s face value. It assumes that the bond is held to maturity and that there are no changes in market conditions affecting its value. This yield is also known as the “coupon rate” or “nominal yield.”
In summary, the total yield on bonds takes into account both interest payments and any changes in the bond’s value over its lifetime, while the flat yield only considers the fixed interest rate of the bond.
what does the word nominal mean in finance?
In finance, the word “nominal” often refers to a value that is stated or named but may not necessarily reflect the actual or current value of something.
For example, the nominal value of a bond refers to the face value or par value of the bond, which is the amount of money that the issuer promises to pay to the bondholder at maturity. The nominal interest rate on a loan or bond is the stated rate of interest, which does not take into account inflation or other factors that may affect the actual purchasing power of the money borrowed or lent.
Here are some other examples of how the term “nominal” is used in finance:
Nominal GDP: This refers to the total value of goods and services produced in an economy over a certain period, without adjusting for inflation.
Nominal exchange rate: This refers to the rate at which one currency can be exchanged for another currency, without adjusting for inflation or other factors.
Nominal value of a company: This refers to the book value of a company’s assets and liabilities, without taking into account market fluctuations or other factors that may affect the company’s true value.
Nominal rate of return: This refers to the rate of return on an investment, without adjusting for inflation or other factors that may affect the actual purchasing power of the returns.
If then statements in Python
What does this code do:
Creates a variable called myName, and asks the user to input their name.
then the if function is asked, and the double equal sign is asking that if the name input by the user is EXACTLY David, THEN you print the text below,
ELSE, you print the “Who on earth are you”
Also note that the if statement ends with the semicolon:
IMportantant to note that the print functions after the
if and else commands must have a single indentation! This signals to the program that the if statement, once true must do everything below which is indented. The same is true for the else command.
What does this code do?
This introduces the elif command. You start with the “if” command, and the first one is asking about Mark, but the “elif” command allows you to create other possible answers besides the initial “if” command. You can add any number of elif commands. Note the same indentation is required, and the same semicolon follows the elif statement. After you put all the “elif” conditions you want, then the code ends this part with the “else” command.
Essentially, “elif” is the same thing as “if” if you want to create a bunch of new “if” statements.
more parameters for the “if” statements
In Python, you can use the following inequality symbols in if statements to compare values:
>
- greater than
< - less than
= - greater than or equal to
<= - less than or equal to
!= - not equal to
Gini Coefficient and
Lorenz curve
Gini Coefficient:
A statistical measure representing income or wealth inequality within a population, ranging from 0 (perfect equality) to 1 (perfect inequality). The Gini coefficient is derived from the Lorenz curve, and a higher value indicates greater inequality.
Lorenz Curve:
A graphical representation of the distribution of income or wealth within a population, plotted with the cumulative percentage of the population on the x-axis and the cumulative percentage of income or wealth on the y-axis. The Lorenz curve is used to calculate the Gini coefficient and to visualize the extent of inequality in a given population.
while True: will cause the code indented underneath it to run on an infinite loop, because “while True:” doesn’t actually define a variable that could be false, so the statement will always be true.
However, the if statement in the indented section allows for a if - break statement, which breaks out of the while True: section of code.
the while True: command starts a loop.
There are ways to have the program behave differently once the loop has started, with the
- break
- continue
- exit commands.
What do they do? Look at this code.
The break command exits us out of the loop and the program runs the next line of code out of the indentation
The continue command makes the loop start again from the begining at that point
The exit() makes the entire program stop completely. It not only exits the loop, it exits everything.
explain how the “for” function, combined with the “range” function works to create a limited loop of code as an alternative to the “while” loop.
some special properties of the variable created in the “for” function
- also what’s up with the using variables, i, j, and k?
- also, what actual numbers does the program cycle through in the example below?
eg:
for counter in range (10)
the variable “counter” only exists within the loop. It can’t be called outside of the loop.
- also note, that by convention, in “for” loops, the variables used by convention are i, or j, or k. No good reason for this, but if you see that in a “for” loop, the reason is just convention, and not because of any other reason. You can label the for loop variable anything you want.
- if you have range (10), the program STARTS from 0 and gets to 9 before stopping. It doesn’t get to 10.
what does for i range (1, 10, 2) mean?
What is wrong with this code:
The program is being instructed to count from 10 to 0 in the range. The default is for the program to do a +1 from the first number in the range to the last number. It is impossible to get from 10 to 0 by adding 1, so the program doesn’t do the count. If you add -1 to the range, it will work:
for i in range (10, 0, -1)
print (i)
Explain this code:
explain
The program defines a subroutine called whichCake, and within the subroutine, there are 3 parameters , called ingredient, base, and coating.
These parameters work as ‘placeholders’ ready to be replaced by arguments that are pass on to the function when the subroutine is called.
So in the last line of code:
whichCake (userIngredient, userBase, userCoating)
what is happening there is that the subroutine defined earlier is being run, but the parameters are replaced by the arguments userIngredient, userBase and userCoating. All of the lines of code where there was “ingredient” before is now replaced by “userIngredient” (which is something that was input by the user earlier).
This allows you to run the exact same subroutine whichCake and have it run endless variations of parameters as long as you provide the arguments.
‘splain!
This code creates a subroutine called pinPicker, with a parameter called number.
The code then imports the random module
It creates a variable called pin, and then tells the program that the variable is a string, not a float or an integer, and it first makes that string empty
Then it create a for loop, for a range, where the number of iterations is the same as the parameter of the entire subroutine, which is number
Then program uses += operation, which adds to the pin variable. If the pin variable was an integer, then the += operation would add to that number (with another number, of course). However, since we defined the pin as a string, it won’t add, but concantenate instead.
So what is being added to pin? It’s going to be a random number, written not as an int, but as a string, and then concantenated to the pin. This will happen 4 times, and then you end up with 4 integers, written next to each other, each of them random, which results in a random 4 digit pin number.
When this happens a certain number of times (the for range loop), THEN what happens is that the entire output of the function, is then tossed back, or returned to the caller of the function.
The line:
generated_pin = pinPicker(4)
does 2 things. It creates a variable that is the output of the pinPicker routine, wtih an argument of 4 and it also RUNS the routine. You don’t need a separate command to run the routine - you can create a variable that contains the output of the routine, and you can call the routine at the same time.
The last time is needed to print the output of the variable we’ve assigned to hold the output of the function.
the {} allows for variables to be put into print statements, and then have the variables defined and called at the end, making it easier to work with printing variables.
the {} tells the program that there is a variable in the parenthesis. Then, at the end, the .format defines what those variables are. The entire varariable “response” is defined as a string with variables in it, with the variables defined with the .format, and then you just have to write print(response) for the entire string to be printed.
The f” “ is telling the program that there is a string coming, but that within the string are also going to be variables enclosed with the {}. You need only define the variables somewhere for the response variable to be fully defined and then just print(response) to print the entire line.
