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They were (one of?) the first serious quant fund, started by James Simon who before that was a math professor at Stony Brook. Along with the NSA they are one of
by bradleyjg 11y ago
They were (one of?) the first serious quant fund, started by James Simon who before that was a math professor at Stony Brook. Along with the NSA they are one of the most aggressive non-academic would be employers of top notch math Phds. They also hire Phds in physics and statistics. The big draw isn't so much the salary as the ability to invest in Medallion.
If you take some of the smartest people in the world and have them intensely focus on making money via trading you get Renaissance. Everyone can't do it because there are only so many some of the smartest people in the world intensely interested in making money via trading to go around.
- nswanberg 11y agoA side-note on the smart people: Nick Patterson, a cold-war cryptologist who had worked at Renaissance for a few years, talked a little about how they had employed some very smart people doing some very basic things like simple regression, and that the people needed to be smart to know how to apply these tools properly, and ensure the data they were applying it on was good. http://www.thetalkingmachines.com/blog/2016/2/26/ai-safety-and-the-legacy-of-bletchley-park http://www.thetalkingmachines.com/blog/2016/2/26/ai-safety-a...
- btilly 11y agoEveryone can't do it because there are only so many some of the smartest people in the world intensely interested in making money via trading to go around. No, everyone can't do it because they are in an 0-sum game. If everyone was as good as Renaissance, then Renaissance wouldn't make money. But if all the smart people are in Renaissance, then Renaissance makes money.