MATH 179
Advanced Topic in Financial Mathematics
Description: Lecture, three hours; discussion, one hour. Requisite: course 174E. Continuation of course 174E. In-depth study of risk measures and instruments of risk management in investment portfolios and corporate financial structure. Exotic and real options, value at risk, mean-variance analysis, portfolio optimization, risk analysis, capital asset pricing model, market efficiency, and Modigliani-Miller theory. P/NP or letter grading.
Units: 4.0
Units: 4.0
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Most Helpful Review
Spring 2024 - Not bad class and fairly good follow up on 174E as per material. There shouldn't be much to wrong. However, she did make it confusing a bit. She didn't curve at all, tests were ok. The TA (Chu, R) was super harsh with grading. Basically no partial credit and harsh/stupid grading, the average grade I think was B-/C+ and she didn't curve at all. He (TA) I think also likes to discourage regrades (and ignores some), and did end up lowering some scores for my peers after initially increasing them (absurd). In terms of this, super unaccommodating and not understanding, definitely one of the worse ones I've had. Homeworks were just 1 question out of a selection, though the HW didn't make a large portion of the grading. It's definitely more interesting and useful than 174E as we use more math. We learn Brownian motion/Weiner process, dynamics (diff eq), Black Scholes Model (the actual PDE and it's applications/proof), option greeks, volatility, Monte Carlo, Value at Risk, portifolio optimization and CAPM model. The CAPM wasn't tested on the final since she was out of town, but we still learnt it by Dr. Voss and it seemed useful.
Spring 2024 - Not bad class and fairly good follow up on 174E as per material. There shouldn't be much to wrong. However, she did make it confusing a bit. She didn't curve at all, tests were ok. The TA (Chu, R) was super harsh with grading. Basically no partial credit and harsh/stupid grading, the average grade I think was B-/C+ and she didn't curve at all. He (TA) I think also likes to discourage regrades (and ignores some), and did end up lowering some scores for my peers after initially increasing them (absurd). In terms of this, super unaccommodating and not understanding, definitely one of the worse ones I've had. Homeworks were just 1 question out of a selection, though the HW didn't make a large portion of the grading. It's definitely more interesting and useful than 174E as we use more math. We learn Brownian motion/Weiner process, dynamics (diff eq), Black Scholes Model (the actual PDE and it's applications/proof), option greeks, volatility, Monte Carlo, Value at Risk, portifolio optimization and CAPM model. The CAPM wasn't tested on the final since she was out of town, but we still learnt it by Dr. Voss and it seemed useful.
AD
Most Helpful Review
Fall 2023 - Ok, so this is going to be a controversial opinion. While I desperately wanted to find resources to learn about Quantitative Finance at UCLA, it is depressing that MATH 179 seems to be the single undergraduate class for it. Voss seems to be the only employed professor for this role in recent history, so afaik he has a wide choice in how much he wants to cover certain topics. Voss has practically zero industry experience being a Quant, as it appears that he wants to be a lifetime academic. While I can appreciate this in less applied fields in Math, I really think Voss should do more to nurture his students' interest in the topics. I came to Voss many times asking for direction or places to learn about X,Y,Z and I got the same response everytime "I don't know, I'm busy with my research"... Very disappointing from someone who had gotten so much hype for others. Overall for UCLA; It wouldn't be that hard to make 2-3 more classes on Quantitative Finance on coding, trading,etc, for undergraduates, although Anderson is trying to shill out their MFE program that costs $90k, so I doubt that will happen.
Fall 2023 - Ok, so this is going to be a controversial opinion. While I desperately wanted to find resources to learn about Quantitative Finance at UCLA, it is depressing that MATH 179 seems to be the single undergraduate class for it. Voss seems to be the only employed professor for this role in recent history, so afaik he has a wide choice in how much he wants to cover certain topics. Voss has practically zero industry experience being a Quant, as it appears that he wants to be a lifetime academic. While I can appreciate this in less applied fields in Math, I really think Voss should do more to nurture his students' interest in the topics. I came to Voss many times asking for direction or places to learn about X,Y,Z and I got the same response everytime "I don't know, I'm busy with my research"... Very disappointing from someone who had gotten so much hype for others. Overall for UCLA; It wouldn't be that hard to make 2-3 more classes on Quantitative Finance on coding, trading,etc, for undergraduates, although Anderson is trying to shill out their MFE program that costs $90k, so I doubt that will happen.
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