42 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
We are better off with Wilmott's work than without it, February 4, 2007
This review is from: Paul Wilmott on Quantitative Finance 3 Volume Set (2nd Edition) (Hardcover)
Paul Wilmott has made quantitative finance his life's work, and this (now three volume) collection of his explications of his own fundamental work and the aggregation of the dispersed work of others is a welcome reference library in a field of increasing density.
Here is the bad news; it doesn't contain everything.
Here is the good news: it doesn't contain everything.
And thank God, because if Wilmott had gone through each topic in the rigorous theorem-proof of yellow-spine Springer books we'd be old men before we got finished.
Wilmott's critics usually center around three areas: tone, incompleteness (or sloppiness), and emphasis.
On emphasis, Wilmott's strengths is his own material in partial differential equations (PDE approach), which makes sense as his earliest background was in the mathematics of fluid dynamics. Some readers, therefore, may detect that there is a heavier hand on PDEs over other analytic or numeric approaches, etc. But like any novel, any collection and textbook must have a "spine" on which to build and reference other topics in extension and contrast.
On incompleteness, readers should consult the "Look Inside" feature for a list of topics, and recognize that quantitative finance is now a field so vast that no one volume can circumscribe the subject. Nevertheless, if there is one collection that covers the most interesting and common topics, it is this one (Hull's 6th edition leaves out some helpful chapters contained in the 5th edition, for example).
On tone, colleagues complain Wilmott glosses over important dimensions and has a flippant engagement with the material. My view is this criticism is simply one of preference. Each author chooses how to express his subject, often injecting themselves into the explanation: this is an effective literary technique hollowed by time and results. Reading Hull is like reading a report from an audit committee: Hull's tone is lean and exact. Wilmott, on the other hand, holds that quantitative finance need not be pompous, needlessly abstract, self-important or dull. In fact, it should be fun. Hull isn't funny nor lively, while Wilmott tries to be both. Neither is wrong, just different approaches to the same goal: trying to get the reader to understand the material.
The term "encyclopedia" (which Wilmott wisely does not use) may have as its root meaning "all knowledge" but even Voltaire's original encyclopediaists were aware of the hubris contained in the phrase. Anyone who whines "it doesn't cover (x)" or "it only glosses over (y)" or "the math isn't rigorous enough" is never going to be satisfied and misses entirely the purpose of this work. If you want to collect all these formulas and topics in the expression of academic journals and enjoy reading about them that way you are but a Google-Scholar search and three years of spare time away from satisfying your unique utility curve. Perhaps it is only for meatheads like me, but so be it. Wilmott's hefty contribution merits widespread use as a reference work, but like anything it is a condensed collection that for any single topic needs additional work by the reader.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Good summary, but of no use to a job seeker, March 31, 2007
This review is from: Paul Wilmott on Quantitative Finance 3 Volume Set (2nd Edition) (Hardcover)
I totally agree with the review of James Ward below. It really doesn't make sense to complain that a SUMMARY of any kind "doesn't cover x" or "glosses over y" because that's unavoidable.
However, I'd like to shed some light of how large the "non-coverage" can be. For instance, you may think that if you have read what Wilmott has to say on Fixed Income Securities, you are at least familiar with the basics, but that's not the case. If you are an entry-level quant looking for a job who claimed to "know the fixed income" you are likely to answer the first 2-3 fixed income interview questions, but fail the rest - unless you add, like, 500 or more pages of fixed income material to what is given in Wilmott.
So if your goal is to be able to claim (even a basic) knowledge of a certain QF topic in your resume, it's necessary to purchase a few good books dedicated entirely to that topic. And to find out what books are good, you don't really need Wilmott's references - using Amazon search and customer reviews should do the job.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
If you plan to work in quant interest rate derivatives, you *must* read it, September 1, 2007
This review is from: Paul Wilmott on Quantitative Finance 3 Volume Set (2nd Edition) (Hardcover)
I have used this book to teach a quantitative course on Fixed Income and Interest Rate Derivatives to those Master-of-Science students who are ready to enter the job market. Several of them got jobs in the quant finance industry as a result of this course. They told me what kind of questions they had on interviews, e.g., "derive the risk-neutral drift of the general HJM model." This interview question may sound intimidating to the uninitiated. But thanks to the extraordinarily simple exposition given in Wilmott, my students were able to answer this and many other such questions.
The math in this book is not complicated, if you read the book carefully. With some modest effort, you can figure out where the equations come from. Wilmott does a great job of showing only the relevant equations and hiding the less-important intermediate steps. Of course, if a reader bounces from section to section and expects to see everything clearly at the first glance, then he/she has unrealistic expectations of a quant book.
As for the comment by one of the reviewers about Wilmott's cartoons and jokes. There are quite a few of those. But you are free to ignore them if you think they distract you. It's always up to you what to read and what not to.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
![[Start the discussion]](http://g-ecx.images-amazon.com/images/G/01/x-locale/communities/discussion_boards/start-new-discussion-sec._V192250339_.gif){kind=small}
