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A mortgage involves making a promise, backing it with collateral, and defining a way to dissolve the promise at prearranged terms in case you want to end it by prepaying. The option to prepay, the refinancing option, makes the mortgage much more complicated than a coupon bond, and therefore something that a hedge fund could make money trading. In this lecture we discuss how to build and calibrate a model to forecast prepayments in order to...more
This lecture begins a series describing the development of organic chemistry in chronological order, beginning with the father of modern chemistry, Lavoisier. The focus is to understand the logic of the development of modern theory, technique and nomenclature so as to use them more effectively. Chemistry begins before Lavoisier's "Chemical Revolution," with the practice of ancient technology and alchemy, and with discoveries like those of ...more
Professor Freeman discusses what it meant to be a British colonist in America in the eighteenth century. She explains how American colonists had deep bonds of tradition and culture with Great Britain. She argues that, as British colonists with a strong sense of their British liberties, settlers in America valued their liberties above all else. She also explains that many Americans had a sense of inferiority when they compared their colonia...more
Generic Lsearch - Prototype, Comparison Function, Implementation, Casting Void*S to Char*S to Compute Byte Offsets, Client Use of Generic Lsearch, Example of a Comparison Function for Integers, More Complicated Data Types and Lsearch- Example Using C-Strings, Comparison Function for Two C-Strings, With Arguments that Represent Char**S, Comparison Functions Where the Key is a Different Type than the Second Argument, Using a Pointer to a Str...more
In order to understand the precise predictions of the Leverage Cycle theory, in this last class we explicitly solve two mathematical examples of leverage cycles. We show how supply and demand determine leverage as well as the interest rate, and how impatience and volatility play crucial roles in setting the interest rate and the leverage. Mathematically, the model helps us identify the three key elements of a crisis. First, scary bad news ...more
Early Modern England: Politics, Religion, and Society under the Tudors and Stuarts (HIST 251)Professor Wrightson begins by discussing recent trends in English political history, which has expanded from focusing solely on institutions to include analysis of political culture. After this, the formal institutions of government, such as the various law courts, the offices of royal administration, and Parliament, are briefly defined and situate...more
Part 1 - What's a Fair Start?: Rawls argues that even meritocracy—a distributive system that rewards effort—doesn’t go far enough in leveling the playing field because those who are naturally gifted will always get ahead. Furthermore, says Rawls, the naturally gifted can’t claim much credit because their success often depends on factors as arbitrary as birth order. Sandel makes Rawls’s point when he asks the students who were first born i...more
One of the central questions in assessing Stalinism is whether or not the abuses of the latter were already present in the first years of the Russian Revolution. The archival evidence suggests that this is partly the case, and that even in its early stages Soviet Russia actively persecuted not just those who were believed to have profited unfairly, without laboring, but also non-Russian ethnic groups. Stalin, although not an ethnic Russian...more
Fundamentals of Physics, II (PHYS 201) Young's double slit experiment shows clearly that light is a wave. (In order to observe the wave behavior of light, the slit size and separation should be comparable or smaller than the wavelength of light.) Interference is described using real and complex numbers (in anticipation of quantum mechanics). Grating and crystal diffraction are analyzed. 00:00 - Chapter 1. Revisions to Geometric Optics 08...more
This lecture is about optimal exercise strategies for callable bonds, which are bonds bundled with an option that allows the borrower to pay back the loan early, if she chooses. Using backward induction, we calculate the borrower's optimal strategy and the value of the option. As with the simple examples in the previous lecture, the option value turns out to be very large. The most important callable bond is the fixed rate amortizing mortg...more
Professor Mazzotta continues his discussion of the Heaven of the Sun (Paradise X-IV), where the earthly disputes between the Franciscan and Dominican orders give way to mutual praise. The tribute St. Thomas pays to the founder of the Franciscan order (Paradise XI) is repaid by St. Bonaventure through his homage to St. Dominic (Paradise XII). The chiasmic structure of these cantos is reinforced by the presence of Nathan and Joachim of Flora...more
Professor Saltzman reviews the pharmacokinetic first-order rate equation that can be used to model changes in drug concentration in the blood, as well as its derivation from the law of conservation of mass. The importance of maintaining a drug concentration that is sufficient for therapeutic purpose, but below a toxic level, is emphasized. Since this is directly affected by drug administration method, ways to localize and sustain therapeut...more
