I've read some great books from Packt, this wasn't really one of them. When the first thread was on HN, I got excited because I love Python and had been looking into starting some investments. Namely, I want to implement a low-risk, low-frequency automated trade strategy. Naively, I assumed this book would be for people who knew Python and were interested in learning finance, but it was the opposite. A lot of concepts were thrown out there with little to no explanation. I gave up reading it until I actually know finance, and can use it as a cookbook.
The code in the book is also shoddy. I don't have it with me, but two examples come to mind. I didn't run any of the examples, but eyeballing them I some of them wouldn't run because of syntax errors -- rather unfortunate for a beginner's text. The section of naming conventions. To write a program using a financial expression like P(1+r)n (exponential growth/decay), the book recommends against using confusing variables like p... in favor of P. P stands for Principal in this case, and I doubt many of you knew that off hand.
For those looking to do finance in Python, I recommend looking into QuantLib[1]. I'm also watching a series of videos from the University of Michigan's online Intro to Finance class on YouTube[2]; however I realized a few days ago that they're probably pirated. That makes me feel bad, but its still a good reference.
If any quants on HN have some better book recs, they would be strongly appreciated.
Edited to add; To be fair, I haven't really touched the section on Monte Carlo simulations, which seems to be the bulk of the value.
This is the same as an older thread, but I didn't comment in the last one, so I thought I'd comment here.
I was a technical reviewer on Node Security from Packt, and it was an interesting experience, so I thought I'd highlight a few things for those who have criticised the quality of Packt books.
- Reviewers are unpaid, I'm not sure if this is normal. I was happy to do it unpaid as experience that I could talk about with future employers. The only 'pay' is a copy of the book, and one other from the library.
- I was found and asked to be a reviewer, but I was quite surprised given my lack of experience. I was also surprised at the lack of experience of the author. I felt I was able to do my job as a reviewer, and would have declined otherwise, but I perhaps they should be finding some more experienced people.
- Node Security is one of their shorter books, most are either several hundred pages and ~$30-40, or about 100 pages and $20. During the review process I highlighted that I felt the book did not contain enough content for a $20 book, lots of it was quite practical stuff that could have been found by reading some READMEs on GitHub repos for the libraries it talked about.
- I noticed that much of the advice in the book was around deployment of Node.js applications, and I suggested an extra chapter specifically about configuring secure deployments, perhaps covering nginx reverse proxying, etc, I felt that this would really improve the overall quality of the book, the focus of each chapter, and ultimately I thought it would make the book well worth the $20. Unfortunately they declined to do this. I'm not sure why, and I'm not sure what my role as a technical reviewer was for because of this. I found some minor issues in the security theory descriptions, and a few errors in example code, as well as making a few suggestions for how bits could be worded better, but it seemed they weren't keen on any major suggestions.
I'm not sure whether I'd buy books from Packt, I'd probably have to evaluate them on an individual basis, but I felt there could have been better selection of authors and reviewers, and that they should have been more open to changes proposed by the reviewers.
I have the book, though haven't spent much time with it yet. Initial impression was that it's quite brisk. You'll get a couple paragraphs on a new concept and then a code snippet to demostrate. You'd need to compliment it with deep study of the actual concepts.
I have unfortunately also been having some very bad experiences with books from PACKT Publishing recently. In the beginning the books were of high quality but somehow things have slipped as of late.
The code in the book is also shoddy. I don't have it with me, but two examples come to mind. I didn't run any of the examples, but eyeballing them I some of them wouldn't run because of syntax errors -- rather unfortunate for a beginner's text. The section of naming conventions. To write a program using a financial expression like P(1+r)n (exponential growth/decay), the book recommends against using confusing variables like p... in favor of P. P stands for Principal in this case, and I doubt many of you knew that off hand.
For those looking to do finance in Python, I recommend looking into QuantLib[1]. I'm also watching a series of videos from the University of Michigan's online Intro to Finance class on YouTube[2]; however I realized a few days ago that they're probably pirated. That makes me feel bad, but its still a good reference.
If any quants on HN have some better book recs, they would be strongly appreciated.
Edited to add; To be fair, I haven't really touched the section on Monte Carlo simulations, which seems to be the bulk of the value.
[1] quantlib.org
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQeZqn-8yM8&list=PL07D40483B...