

Python for Finance - tom_jones
http://www.packtpub.com/python-for-finance/book

======
danpalmer
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.

------
fabulist
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.

[1] quantlib.org

[2]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQeZqn-8yM8&list=PL07D40483B...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQeZqn-8yM8&list=PL07D40483B1BE4B4C&index=1)

------
j2kun
Older thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7680223](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7680223)

------
Tycho
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.

Still, sometimes breadth is better than depth.

