Spring 2025
Today is almost the summer solstice; we’re having this year’s hottest week so far; it’s the final day of Trinity Term! Oxford really is gorgeous in the sunshine.
After a quick dash home to London I’ll be in New York for eight weeks doing an internship at Bridgewater, and then in Berkeley from mid-August to early September. Say hi if you’re around :)
Studying “quantitative economics”1 this term has been fun but also reinforced my impression that most of the statistics done by non-statistician economists is quite alchemical and cookbook-y. «This is a situation of type T, so I should perform the ABC test and interpret the result like XYZ» works fine until you don’t know which recipe to use.
I’m now doing less VC for Macroscopic and more general investment strategy, which has been a welcome change. We’re running a hiring round at OAISI; perhaps you should apply?
Recent media consumption:
- Absolutely loved Piranesi by Suzanne Clark. Won’t say any more about it because that would spoil the fun – don’t read the blurb!
- Started watching some of the Apple TV adaptation of Murderbot but I didn’t really like the characterisation of Murderbot; in the books they have a much drier sense of humour and also seem more adorably/achingly insecure. Although possibly I just associate American accents with confidence?
- I have seen so many pieces lately about the plight of university graduates in labour markets, often also talking about AI displacement. I wonder if mainstream discourse is catching up to reality?
- Listening to lots of HAIM & Wolf Alice, some Suki Waterhouse, CMAT, sombr, Mallrat, Olivia Dean (who I saw as the warm-up at a Sam Fender concert earlier this month). Not sure how much I’m a fan of Lorde’s new album so far.
-
The second of three econometrics-y courses. This one covers linear regression, RCTs, instrumental variables, stationarity, unit roots, and a bit of cointegration. ↩︎