Complex Systems - Jean-Philippe Bouchaud - Lecture 1: General Introduction. Fat tails vs thin tails — Transcript
Full transcript
- 0:01okay
- 0:06okay so welcome to this uh lecture on uh
- 0:10statistical physics and social sciences
- 0:12uh obviously in very strange
- 0:16conditions uh so it's going to be mostly
- 0:19on the Blackboard but with many slides
- 0:23today and a few slides later on but just
- 0:26for illustration purposes
- 0:29um so this first lecture is going to be
- 0:32special in the sense that I'm going to
- 0:33spend a long time explaining what I want
- 0:36to do the motivation why
- 0:39a lecture on a link with links between
- 0:43statistical mechanics
- 0:44and economics or social sciences
- 0:49um
- 0:50and uh and and then the the lecture will
- 0:54be cut into Parts first part will be a
- 0:57lecture and the second part will be
- 0:58today and Valentina will intervene a
- 1:02little uh later on to explain
- 1:05how she wants to organize it
- 1:09um so anyway
- 1:11um at this point I thought it was it
- 1:13would be useful to explain where I'm
- 1:16coming from and what is my path that led
- 1:20me to uh
- 1:22study things outside physics So I myself
- 1:25a physicist by by training I did my PhD
- 1:28actually here I take a long multiplayer
- 1:31on physical mechanics
- 1:34in 85 so a long time ago
- 1:37and then I I slowly got interested in uh
- 1:43economics or Finance subjects so
- 1:46something that started in the 90s is now
- 1:49called economysics is the attempt to
- 1:53apply physics methods to economics and
- 1:57finance and in the 90s people from
- 2:02physics got more and more involved in
- 2:04the modeling of uh financial markets
- 2:07wealth inequalities
- 2:09networks agent-based models things that
- 2:12I'm going to talk more about during the
- 2:15lecture
- 2:17um and and so really Econo physics is is
- 2:21a misnomer in the sense that initially
- 2:23uh people were more interested in
- 2:25finance uh for a reason I'm going to
- 2:28allude to in a second rather than not
- 2:31economics per se and this is the evolved
- 2:35and and now things are changing and as
- 2:38more and more links between real
- 2:40economics and and physics
- 2:43so simultaneously to this academic uh
- 2:47foray into
- 2:50economics and finance
- 2:52I started a company uh in 94. uh called
- 2:58science and finance and this company
- 3:00merged into in 2000 with uh another
- 3:04company Capital fund management CFM
- 3:06which was launched in in 91 and is now
- 3:10uh a pretty large asset manager called
- 3:15quantitative Asset Management with
- 3:17around 250 people including 65 hard
- 3:23scientists so people with a PhD in
- 3:26physics mathematics computer science and
- 3:29so on so people maybe like you later on
- 3:33in your career and so this this company
- 3:37was really created to
- 3:40enhance the interaction between physics
- 3:43and finance but from a professional
- 3:45point of view this time not from uh
- 3:47purely academic point of view and so
- 3:50I've been involved in that company now
- 3:52since uh since 94.
- 3:55so why Econo physics started uh in in
- 4:00the 90s and not before because as you're
- 4:03going to see there's there's a lot of
- 4:06theoretical aspects that lend themselves
- 4:09to uh to these Bridges between
- 4:12disciplines
- 4:14but I think that what really explained
- 4:16the whole move was the fact that
- 4:18starting in the early 90s or late 80s
- 4:22data became available so uh whereas in
- 4:2785 it was really difficult to put your
- 4:29hand on
- 4:31data file for example I remember trying
- 4:34to get the data of the foreign exchange
- 4:38rates between Deutsche Mark at the time
- 4:41and dollar
- 4:42and it was pretty difficult to to get
- 4:45that data
- 4:46it was also slow to handle the data and
- 4:50so what started in the 90s was the
- 4:53simultaneous availability of enormous
- 4:56data sets and the possibility to do
- 4:59numerical experiments on on these data
- 5:01sets
- 5:03and the speed of light so to say so you
- 5:05wouldn't have to wait for hours to get
- 5:08the result of simple statistical
- 5:10analysis so of course this um enhances
- 5:13the motivation to do research when you
- 5:15have the tools and the data then
- 5:18something happens
- 5:20and also maybe from a more
- 5:24fundamental point of view the field of
- 5:27what's called complex systems and my
- 5:30lectures will be a lot of on what's now
- 5:33considered to be part of of the Corpus
- 5:35of complex System Theory which is a
- 5:37pretty vague notion actually but
- 5:41um still people started
- 5:44maybe in the 70s in physics to study
- 5:47systems that are more complex than than
- 5:51the usual systems that physicists were
- 5:53interested in before that and started
- 5:56devising
- 5:57um interesting technical tools to or
- 6:00technical Concepts to deal with these
- 6:04systems and
- 6:07um and I think people were convinced
- 6:09that these ideas could actually be
- 6:12exported to other fields as well and
- 6:15this has happened already in biology for
- 6:17example
- 6:19but um but also people really thought
- 6:23that something like that could be
- 6:25applied to economics and finance as well
- 6:28so uh I think that these two
- 6:32um items simultaneously data and
- 6:36theoretical Corpus pushed a lot of
- 6:38people in the direction of trying to
- 6:41look at other things rather than
- 6:43physical systems including man-made
- 6:46man-made systems like economics Finance
- 6:49or other sociological issues
- 6:53so now can I
- 6:57yeah okay
- 7:00so as I said this was uh the uh early
- 7:03start in the 90s
- 7:06but what actually happened uh was in a
- 7:10sense quite disappointing in in
- 7:13because the not much contact with
- 7:17mainstream economists did take place at
- 7:21least until quite recently and I'll try
- 7:24to explain why this was a difficult
- 7:27endeavor
- 7:29uh there has been some progress with uh
- 7:32Fringe economies so economists who
- 7:34themselves were not feeling its ease in
- 7:36their own discipline or we're studying
- 7:39subjects that were outside the
- 7:41mainstream but as I said uh this has
- 7:44accelerated and I'll show you a few
- 7:46examples of that
- 7:48on the other hand
- 7:49um
- 7:51not only because there's there's more
- 7:55data in finance or they had at the time
- 7:57they were there was more data to put
- 8:00your hands on uh in in finance there's
- 8:03been quite a lot of success with
- 8:06quantity Finance so the uh the transfer
- 8:09of ideas from physics to finance was
- 8:11actually more successful than the
- 8:14transfer of ideas from physics economics
- 8:19and in part it is because there's a lot
- 8:22of
- 8:23physicists will or or people with a PhD
- 8:26in physics who went into the banking
- 8:29industry
- 8:30and really had an impact in terms of
- 8:34practical applications of
- 8:36ideas or methods or concepts
- 8:41of the physicist that actually
- 8:44accelerated this interaction
- 8:46and so
- 8:48um I want to explain a little bit why
- 8:50it's been so difficult and in particular
- 8:53um insist on the different cultures and
- 8:56methodologies which actually surprised
- 9:00me early on because I thought at the
- 9:02time that science was a unique thing
- 9:04that people considered science the same
- 9:07way any place you would be and any
- 9:10discipline you you would study but
- 9:12actually you realize and this was my own
- 9:15as I said surprise that being a
- 9:18scientist doesn't mean that you share
- 9:20necessarily the same philosophy about
- 9:22how science should be done and this is a
- 9:26big huddle in the transfer of ideas and
- 9:30I think one has to be aware of that when
- 9:31one tries to uh
- 9:34forays in in different disciplines
- 9:38so let me explain
- 9:41the cultural gap between uh economics at
- 9:45least at the time 30 years ago and of
- 9:49course again insisting on this things
- 9:52are changing and changing pretty rapidly
- 9:54now
- 9:55so economics is constructed
- 10:00as a more of an axiomatic science in the
- 10:03sense that there are very strong
- 10:06hypothesis to start with and very strong
- 10:09logical constraints applied to the
- 10:10theory
- 10:11uh one reason for that and we know the
- 10:15same things can happen in physics as
- 10:16well when you lack data is that you try
- 10:19to supplement the lack of data by by uh
- 10:22by Logic by constraining the theory by
- 10:25imposing very strong uh logical
- 10:28constraints
- 10:29so what you end up with is a theory
- 10:32that's mathematically consistent
- 10:38and actually a lot of
- 10:41um theoretical papers in economics are
- 10:43written a little bit like math papers
- 10:45with a
- 10:46theorems and lemmas
- 10:49but the problem is that the the axioms
- 10:53or the fundamental principles on which
- 10:55the theory is constructed lead to ideas
- 10:58that are not always plausible so for
- 11:00example
- 11:01we should be rational agents with
- 11:04infinite foresight and infinite
- 11:07computing power to solve very
- 11:09complicated problems
- 11:11and as a model for human decisions
- 11:15um I think maybe you will share with me
- 11:16the idea that it's not exactly the way
- 11:19we humans behave anyway
- 11:22you can also Imagine That making these
- 11:25assumptions are allowed to make the
- 11:28theory uh mathematically tractable
- 11:32so the the problem with the What's
- 11:35called the classical construct of
- 11:37Economics is that there's a huge number
- 11:40of empirical anomalies
- 11:43so people speak about anomalies in
- 11:46finance or economics papers
- 11:49all the time so for example one of the
- 11:52best known anomaly is called the excess
- 11:55volatility in financial markets
- 11:57financial markets seem to move much to
- 11:59much every day compared to what should
- 12:03be expected in a you know kind of uh
- 12:05generally equilibrium rational
- 12:08agent point of view I can't explain why
- 12:12at this point but uh
- 12:14in a sense it's intuitively plausible
- 12:17that if the price of a company should
- 12:21reflects something fundamental about the
- 12:24value of this company it's very strange
- 12:26that this value should vary by like two
- 12:29percent every day on average so it moves
- 12:33up and down on the order of of two
- 12:35percent which is very large and it's
- 12:38usually not accompanied with some piece
- 12:41of news that would explain why the price
- 12:42is changing so
- 12:44so this is a well-known anomaly there's
- 12:46a similar anomaly for uh economies as a
- 12:51whole
- 12:51which is called the the business cycle
- 12:54Paradox
- 12:56um and it's a little bit the same that
- 12:58our large economies economy of the US
- 13:01for example
- 13:02is fluctuating uh far too much compared
- 13:05to what it what exogenous shocks that is
- 13:09things that should would explain why the
- 13:12economy goes into recessions and so on
- 13:15it seems that a lot of these uh crises
- 13:18are due to uh
- 13:21endogenous mechanisms rather than
- 13:23exogenous mechanisms at least this is a
- 13:26point of view that is developing right
- 13:28now
- 13:30and so all these nominees are outside
- 13:33the scope of textbook series including
- 13:35crisis and I guess that everybody will
- 13:37agree that understanding crisis whether
- 13:41they're
- 13:41Financial or economic economical is a is
- 13:47a major aspect of what the economic
- 13:49theory should provide
- 13:52uh by the way we are going to be uh or
- 13:56we are already now in in a crisis of a
- 13:58different nature but clearly the covet
- 14:00crisis is not uh of the type that I just
- 14:03described clearly there's an exogenous
- 14:05cause in this case
- 14:07but
- 14:08um as I'm going to show you in a second
- 14:12um in 2008
- 14:14um so maybe the 2008 crisis is already
- 14:18something that we all have got in view
- 14:20of what happened in 2020 but in 2008 uh
- 14:25the crisis clearly was not a very clear
- 14:27nature and uh and I'll show in a second
- 14:31uh
- 14:33um quotes of economists who have
- 14:36reflected on the fact that 2008 was from
- 14:38the point of view of Economics a very
- 14:41strange
- 14:42events
- 14:44also what is the Striking when you come
- 14:47from physics is that
- 14:49um it is very difficult to
- 14:51to publish uh in economics Channel if
- 14:54you come up with a Theory or of an idea
- 14:57that that is not
- 14:59uh you know really in the in the
- 15:02mainstream or or if you're not an
- 15:03economist yourself uh you you will find
- 15:06it very difficult at least until
- 15:08recently to publish an economics Journal
- 15:11so uh the discipline is the
- 15:15is in a sense not very open to new ideas
- 15:18and that's very different from uh what
- 15:21physics has evolved to so in order to
- 15:24illustrate what I just said let me quote
- 15:26two uh well-known economies one uh
- 15:30William Brita who was uh working at the
- 15:33bank of England for many for many years
- 15:35and he who wrote a little bit after the
- 15:38crisis in 2008
- 15:39so March 2009 uh a piece of which I'm
- 15:43extracting a few sentences here but the
- 15:46piece is called the unfortunate
- 15:48uselessness of most state-of-the-art
- 15:50academic monetary economics so you can
- 15:52imagine that the tone of the of the
- 15:54column
- 15:56and so what he says is research tended
- 15:58to be motivated by internal logic and
- 16:00aesthetic puzzles of established
- 16:02research programs rather than a powerful
- 16:04desire to understand how the economy
- 16:06works let alone how it works during
- 16:08times of stresses of stress and
- 16:11financial instability so the economics
- 16:13profession was called unprepared when
- 16:15this when the crisis struck I think here
- 16:18what is really important to underline is
- 16:21this sentence where he says rather than
- 16:24a powerful desire to understand how the
- 16:26economy works I think that's the
- 16:28difference at least what I perceived the
- 16:32difference between the physics approach
- 16:34and the economics approach is whether
- 16:36you really want to understand what's
- 16:38going on at the price of dropping
- 16:41a nice formalism
- 16:43and abandoning the idea of constructing
- 16:46the theory in a completely logical way
- 16:49or whether you prefer to have to remain
- 16:53in a
- 16:55saying mathematically well defined
- 16:59framework where your field advances uh
- 17:03through mathematics like axioms theorems
- 17:07and lemmas rather than
- 17:10ugly physics types theories so I'm going
- 17:12to go back to that
- 17:14so the other piece that I want to
- 17:16mention is a piece by Olivia
- 17:19was Chief Economist uh had the
- 17:24World banked I think
- 17:28um and he wrote something uh in 2014
- 17:32that you can find on the internet
- 17:34no IMF not a while back it's a
- 17:36nationally monetary fund sorry uh call
- 17:39where danger lacks so that's the piece
- 17:42in in full that you can easily access on
- 17:46the internet and he said something that
- 17:49I'm going to reiterate a little later he
- 17:53said we in the field field did think of
- 17:56the economy as roughly linear constantly
- 17:58subject to different shocks constantly
- 18:00fluctuating but naturally returning to a
- 18:02steady state over time so it's really
- 18:05this picture of a marble in a ball and
- 18:08you shake the ball so the marble moves
- 18:10but it's always attracted to the bottom
- 18:13of the of the ball and and therefore
- 18:16nothing much can happen and you'll see
- 18:18that this pie dying of the harmonic
- 18:21oscillator so to say of
- 18:24linear participation around a stable
- 18:27equilibrium is also very much a paradigm
- 18:31that that overwhelmed physics for many
- 18:33years
- 18:35so what he says then he says the main
- 18:38lesson of the 2008 crisis is that we
- 18:40were much closer to dark Corners
- 18:43situations in which the economy could
- 18:45badly malfunction than we thought now
- 18:47that we are more aware of
- 18:49non-linearities and the dangers they
- 18:51pose we should explore them further
- 18:53theoretically and empirically trying to
- 18:55create a model that describes crisis may
- 18:57be beyond the profession's conceptual
- 18:59and Technical reach at this stage so I'm
- 19:02really quoting these people who are well
- 19:06trained and well
- 19:08regarded economists to say to to
- 19:11illustrate the fact that it's not me
- 19:14from an excellent point of view it's
- 19:15always easy to um
- 19:18criticize other people's Garden
- 19:23but what I want to illustrate with these
- 19:26quotes is that the critics comes from
- 19:29inside the profession as well and it
- 19:32really these critics really developed
- 19:35since the 2008 crisis which acted as a
- 19:39kind of uh uh a catalyst to develop new
- 19:45ideas and abandoned
- 19:47simple theories
- 19:50so I've tried to explain how Economics
- 19:52work at least theoretical economics of
- 19:55course economics is a huge field with
- 19:57people doing uh very much empirical work
- 20:01and or actually field work and very far
- 20:04from uh Theory but uh but theory is an
- 20:08important aspect because people are very
- 20:10influenced by the general uh Concepts
- 20:14that are taught at an early age and so I
- 20:17think that even if people are not
- 20:19serious themselves they were still
- 20:22exposed to theoretical ideas that that
- 20:25influenced their uh their their way to
- 20:28do science much longer after they've
- 20:31been exposed to these ideas and it's the
- 20:33same with physics and the way most of
- 20:36you have learned physics I guess so
- 20:38physics Works a little differently I
- 20:40mean the observation is uh is the
- 20:43starting point and then there's a
- 20:45mathematical transcription uh of reality
- 20:49and from this mathematical
- 20:50transcriptions one tries to get
- 20:52predictions
- 20:53and then there's a loop if predictions
- 20:55are not compatible with observation uh
- 20:58kill the theory and if the predictions
- 21:00are compatible then carry on even when
- 21:03the theory is not logically consistent
- 21:04and this may be a surprise for people as
- 21:08I said people
- 21:09depending on their background don't
- 21:11regard science the same way and I guess
- 21:15this is strange to think that we live
- 21:18physicists with theories that are not
- 21:20logically consistent or have sometimes
- 21:22difficulty with the logical consistency
- 21:25for example
- 21:26the fact that thermodynamics leads to an
- 21:30error of time whereas is well known uh
- 21:34hamiltonian Dynamics is reversible this
- 21:37has creates an enormous havoc in
- 21:40statistical mechanics and it's still
- 21:42something that people debate how can we
- 21:45at the same time speak about things that
- 21:47are that have an arrow of time where
- 21:50when the microscopic foundations of the
- 21:53series doesn't
- 21:55and okay so it's it's a philosophical
- 21:58problem if you want but we have to learn
- 22:00to live with that and we're not obsessed
- 22:02with this uh Paradox when we use
- 22:05thermodynamics to actually describe
- 22:08what's going on in the world we have
- 22:11difficulty generalizing quantum
- 22:12mechanics from the micro scale to the
- 22:14macro scale we have difficulty merging
- 22:17gravitation with quantum mechanics and
- 22:19so on but as I said it's it's not a
- 22:22reason to stop and to not to use these
- 22:25uh these theories that are also
- 22:28extremely efficient in describing what
- 22:31they want to describe
- 22:33so this idea of efficiency of the
- 22:35description rather than logical
- 22:37consistency I think is is what is for me
- 22:41it at least is the one of the strongest
- 22:43cultural gaps between the two fields and
- 22:47what I've said it's very difficult to
- 22:49publish in the economics journal and in
- 22:51physics it's a little bit the other way
- 22:53around there's many crazy papers are
- 22:56accepted and published and many of these
- 22:59papers are actually wrong but I think
- 23:01that in physicists have learned that uh
- 23:05crazy ideas can be right and that in the
- 23:08process of developing science it's
- 23:11important to let these ideas uh at least
- 23:13be expressed and maybe rejected if they
- 23:17lead to nowhere but the idea that
- 23:19science progresses also by trial and
- 23:22error is is important we've had you know
- 23:25many surprises in in physics when people
- 23:29in the late 19th centuries thought that
- 23:32everything was solved and then suddenly
- 23:34uh new crazy apparently crazy things
- 23:37happen and we have to revise the theory
- 23:41okay so as I said there's a cultural Gap
- 23:44but the Gap is narrowing in 2008 uh the
- 23:492008 crisis has led to introspection
- 23:53um agent-based models ABM that's really
- 23:56something that physicists do all the
- 23:59time we come we start from micro rules
- 24:03so for example atoms colliding at the
- 24:06micro scale and and then derive or try
- 24:09to derive what happens at the macro
- 24:11scale
- 24:12and so agent-based models in economics
- 24:15but also in other disciplines take human
- 24:18beings as atoms but it's really the same
- 24:20idea how do you construct a theory of
- 24:23traffic jams or or epidemic spreading or
- 24:27maybe
- 24:28economies as a whole starting from
- 24:31Agents that do things that may not be
- 24:34completely rational but at least that
- 24:36you can simulate and try to understand
- 24:38sometimes with more advanced theoretical
- 24:42tools how simple rules at the micro
- 24:45level can lead to extremely complex or
- 24:48extremely surprising uh emergent
- 24:51phenomena at the macro scale
- 24:54um
- 24:55I said earlier that in the early 90s
- 24:59people thought that complex theory was
- 25:01ripened off
- 25:02to make a transition between physics and
- 25:07other fields actually we now have 30
- 25:09more years or 40 more years of this
- 25:12Theory developing
- 25:14with many new ideas and many new uh
- 25:17tools as well or at least tools that
- 25:20that have ripened and people understand
- 25:23better what they mean and so I think
- 25:26really
- 25:27um now time is right to to
- 25:31engage in in a constructive interaction
- 25:36with
- 25:37with economists and there are huge
- 25:41challenges ahead to construct something
- 25:43that's both intellectually satisfying
- 25:46and useful for policy makers
- 25:51and that's why I believe that we need to
- 25:54be cultural students students who know
- 25:56uh
- 25:57physics you know the mythology of
- 26:01physics but also
- 26:03um the mythology and the in the
- 26:05questions that economists ask and that's
- 26:09a little bit my motivation to create
- 26:12this course this lectures here is to
- 26:16have students like you who may well
- 26:19engage later on in these uh in these
- 26:22problems and and come with a cultural
- 26:26background that allow them to make make
- 26:29a difference so something I wanted to
- 26:31show as an illustration of this
- 26:34this this move or this Progressive
- 26:38closing of the cultural Gap
- 26:41is the cover page of
- 26:44a journal called the Oxford review of
- 26:46Economic Policy uh February 2018 so not
- 26:50long ago called rebuilding macroeconomic
- 26:52Theory so it's pretty ambitious and
- 26:54tells you again that people seem to be
- 26:56aware that there is a problem and if you
- 26:59look closely you'll see here
- 27:02that there's the um an article written
- 27:06by um the head of research at the bank
- 27:09of England and the aldain and a
- 27:11physicist called Arthur Terrell called
- 27:14an indiscipline interdisciplinary model
- 27:16of microeconomics where they Advocate
- 27:20the use of these agent-based models in
- 27:23in economics as well so just to show you
- 27:26that things are moving and there's a now
- 27:29a clear
- 27:33a clear view that economic theory as it
- 27:36was conducted before 2008 cannot
- 27:40continue unchanged in that we need to
- 27:43roll our sleeves and build something
- 27:46better that is able to
- 27:49monitor economic crisis in a more
- 27:52efficient way
- 27:55just Okay so
- 28:00um the scope of the lectures is
- 28:03to give you a series of
- 28:07of inspiring stories uh and of course
- 28:10I've said that there's no consistent
- 28:13framework uh
- 28:16yet to replace the the old
- 28:20rational agent way of seeing the world
- 28:22in economics but I think that there's
- 28:27enough
- 28:28in the Corpus of complex systems in
- 28:31terms of examples of these uh emerging
- 28:35phenomena of these widely fluctuating
- 28:38objects
- 28:39that we we can derive or build from them
- 28:44something that is going to be more
- 28:47useful and at least even if that's not
- 28:49the case I think these stories that I'm
- 28:52trying to that I'll try to give you are
- 28:55interesting on their own and even if you
- 28:58don't do anything in social sciences
- 29:00economics later on I hope that you'll
- 29:03find these stories interesting and
- 29:06useful for
- 29:07all the fields as well because actually
- 29:09they are pretty generic uh in terms of
- 29:12uh mechanisms in mathematics
- 29:15so
- 29:17um my lecture is really not about
- 29:21ethereums and Mathematics at all it it's
- 29:25not nor it is what I'm doing now
- 29:29something you know soft and and
- 29:31qualitative it's it's going to be I hope
- 29:34a mixture of both so I'm going to give
- 29:36you qualitative arguments and tell you
- 29:39stories but of course I'm going also to
- 29:42go into details sometimes on in on the
- 29:45board and give you real calculations of
- 29:47how one actually derives on things and
- 29:50these real calculations will be
- 29:52enhanced by Valentina Valentin STD where
- 29:56you really will have to work on
- 29:58uh um
- 30:00concrete
- 30:02models like like physicists are are used
- 30:07to so um
- 30:09so it is going to be quite a theoretical
- 30:12uh set of lectures as well
- 30:15um and and the basic punch line of these
- 30:18lectures is that if you have something
- 30:21that mixes fluctuations and interactions
- 30:24then interact interesting uh phenomena
- 30:28can appear
- 30:30so
- 30:32um the outline very quickly uh
- 30:36and how the slides will be available for
- 30:39you to to see
- 30:41um so I'm going to start today with uh
- 30:48discussing different types of random
- 30:50variables random variables with
- 30:53so-called thin tails and and random
- 30:57variables with fat tails and I'm going
- 30:59to tell you how they are different so my
- 31:02fluctuations versus y fluctuations
- 31:06then I'm going to move on to study
- 31:09multiplicative models for population
- 31:12growth and wealth growth or and you'll
- 31:14see that many of these
- 31:17situations are described by a kind of
- 31:19unified framework where many interesting
- 31:22mathematical uh phenomena or physical
- 31:26phenomena happen that I think are very
- 31:29useful to know about again not
- 31:31necessarily for social sciences but more
- 31:34generally in physics or other Natural
- 31:37Sciences
- 31:38I'm going to speak about uh it's called
- 31:41branching processes and Ava launches
- 31:43like that sometimes one single event can
- 31:47trigger
- 31:48an avalanche full-scale Avalanche
- 31:52like the word says a fraction of the
- 31:57slope of a mountain
- 31:59unpins and creates something big and of
- 32:03course here we're going to be interested
- 32:04in in the mechanism that can lead to
- 32:07crisis from that point of view of of one
- 32:10grain
- 32:12uh triggering more grains to to roll
- 32:16down the slope and so on
- 32:18I'll speak about uh networks in crisis
- 32:22how networks can lead to Contagion
- 32:25effects or mediate contagions
- 32:27and and actually again
- 32:30generate system-wide
- 32:33crisis rather than small local
- 32:36perturbations
- 32:39uh I'll speak about
- 32:41um interactions and stabilities and
- 32:43Collective effects
- 32:45illustrated by many different types of
- 32:49models and then if I have time but I
- 32:52never have time so um
- 32:54this is uh this is a promise I shouldn't
- 32:57even try to
- 32:59mention uh in my last part in the last
- 33:03part of these lectures I wanted to speak
- 33:06about I know the Dynamics of financial
- 33:08markets but it turns out that
- 33:10I don't really have time to do that
- 33:13anyway
- 33:14uh so again today is special I'm going
- 33:18to give a full three-hour lecture or
- 33:22something
- 33:23um with a pause uh around yeah in 10 30
- 33:28quarter to 11. but then after that
- 33:31you'll have me again
- 33:33um but usually I'll give a one and a
- 33:37half hour lecture from nine to
- 33:4110 30. so usually I start at 905 but now
- 33:45the situation is a little different and
- 33:47people seem to be more on time
- 33:50when it's online than when it's for real
- 33:53so I'll I'll start I'll try to start
- 33:55slightly after nine but not
- 33:58a very long after nine and then
- 34:02um then Valentina will do the today
- 34:06so from
- 34:0911 to uh 12 30 I guess
- 34:14um so maybe my lecture will be 1 hour 45
- 34:16and but it's it's around these uh these
- 34:20times and maybe I can leave her uh now
- 34:23to tell you a little bit what she wants
- 34:25to talk about and how she wants to
- 34:27organize these uh yesterday
- 34:33so Valentina is in the room with me
- 34:34actually but okay I hope you'll see her
- 34:37hear me can anybody tell me if you can
- 34:40hear me now
- 34:43I can hear you
- 34:46okay great so well first of all uh good
- 34:50morning everybody I'm Valentin and I
- 34:52will be working together with you on the
- 34:55today's and exercises
- 34:57that indeed we'll start next week so
- 35:01today I will just take two minutes to
- 35:03tell you something about the
- 35:05organization so there are four things
- 35:07that I want to tell you and the first
- 35:09one is that I think it's a good idea to
- 35:12have a mailing list with all the people
- 35:14who are here so that we can exchange
- 35:16emails and information about the course
- 35:18so I already took the email addresses
- 35:21which I saw which Medina Mart gave me
- 35:24but I think there are more people in
- 35:26here than the ones I have so if you know
- 35:28that you're not registered in that list
- 35:31of the people who want to follow the
- 35:33course please write your email either in
- 35:36the chat or send me an email I will
- 35:37write my address
- 35:39in the chat
- 35:41so that I can add you and we can be
- 35:45informed without going through Medina
- 35:48okay so that was the first thing the and
- 35:50I will send an email tonight maybe to
- 35:52check that uh everybody's there and
- 35:54things work
- 35:55so the second thing is about the
- 35:57material of uh the today so this year we
- 36:00have this repository of ens where we can
- 36:03put materials together with the video of
- 36:06the talks so I think it is a good idea
- 36:08to use that so we have a unique place
- 36:10where to store things so what I will put
- 36:14in there are essentially the text of the
- 36:17Theta so the exercises are splitted into
- 36:20two categories let's say we will have
- 36:23the today's which are normal exercises
- 36:25that we will discuss together on
- 36:27Wednesday at the Blackboard and then
- 36:30there are what I call the homework and
- 36:32the arm work are some little coding
- 36:36exercises which I wrote in in jupyter
- 36:39notebooks so in Python and they are a
- 36:42little bit for you to let's say play
- 36:45around with some of the topics that then
- 36:47we will discuss during the Terrace and
- 36:51also during the lectures
- 36:54um and also to visualize more
- 36:57simulations of the various processes
- 36:59that we will discuss
- 37:02and they are not compulsory but I think
- 37:04they are a good way to uh practice a
- 37:07little bit with these Concepts so as I
- 37:09said I made them in Jupiter notebooks so
- 37:12maybe not everybody is used to it so if
- 37:15you go to the folder of ens you will
- 37:17find a PDF with some instructions on how
- 37:20to download
- 37:22this python or these notebooks and also
- 37:26how to use them if you don't want to
- 37:27download them you can use them in the
- 37:29browser so there are instructions on
- 37:31those as well and if you don't want to
- 37:34use Python at all I will also upload
- 37:36some HTML version of the exercises that
- 37:39you can just read to see what's going on
- 37:41and then maybe you can use whatever
- 37:43language you want to do the exercises
- 37:46so for the timing it works like this I
- 37:48will upload the text of the today end of
- 37:51the arm work one week in advance so if
- 37:54you go there you already find the ones
- 37:56for next week so you have one week of
- 37:59time to to to read them to uh to go
- 38:03through sometimes in the theater there
- 38:04is some Theory so to go through that and
- 38:06try to think about the exercises then on
- 38:08Wednesday we discuss them and as soon as
- 38:10we are finished with the lecture I will
- 38:14upload a version with all the solutions
- 38:16of both today and exercises plus the
- 38:19text for for the ones of the following
- 38:21week
- 38:22and if you go to the folder now you will
- 38:25also find a little bit of outline of uh
- 38:28that it is for the various weeks so you
- 38:30can have an idea of what we are going to
- 38:33discuss and I also put the lecture notes
- 38:35of the course of Professor busho and
- 38:39Mark mezar at the call Polytechnic which
- 38:41had a little bit of overlap with what
- 38:43we'll be discussing here so maybe that's
- 38:45useful for you uh third thing I I will
- 38:50make a Google doc which I called
- 38:51question and answer for for us to to
- 38:55write down any comments or questions on
- 38:57the lecture since we kind of discuss in
- 39:00person so I will send that to you
- 39:02together with a mailing list and the
- 39:05last thing is that so the today is
- 39:07supposed to be of in theory of one hour
- 39:10from 11 to 12 but as you will see there
- 39:13is more material than what we will be
- 39:15covering in one hour so we can do two
- 39:17things either we make it longer and that
- 39:20is perhaps what I would prefer and and
- 39:23go until 12 30. if everybody agrees or
- 39:27we keep one hour and then with the
- 39:29solutions you you try to feel the gaps
- 39:32of what we don't manage to discuss so we
- 39:35can discuss about this I guess next week
- 39:38because I think this week everybody will
- 39:41follow different courses and then you
- 39:43make up your ideas about the schedule
- 39:45and so next week is perhaps a good point
- 39:47to decide all together
- 39:50okay I think that's it basically
- 39:54so see you next week
- 39:56see you yes so thank you Valentina
- 40:01um okay so that's the parts of the
- 40:04regular weeks today and lecture there's
- 40:08of course an exam at the end and so the
- 40:10exam is uh traditionally a scientific
- 40:13paper that recent I mean the last 10
- 40:17years that in English that we ask you to
- 40:21read comment and explain so uh there's
- 40:24time to read the paper and then there
- 40:26are various questions allowing you to
- 40:29express what you understood but also
- 40:31redo some calculations or calculations
- 40:34that are that are not fully explicit in
- 40:37the paper that we ask you to be able to
- 40:39redo and of course the paper is chosen
- 40:42uh in line with the types of models and
- 40:47methods that you have seen during the
- 40:50lectures under today
- 40:52so
- 40:54um the idea here is that usually we have
- 40:56a diverse crowd of students and and so
- 40:59some of you are more on the technical
- 41:02side others are more qualitative and
- 41:06um
- 41:08more on the idea science if you want and
- 41:11so it's it's a way not to bias these
- 41:16exams task one profile
- 41:18uh that's the other so
- 41:20it usually works quite well and um so
- 41:24yeah
- 41:26a few years ago we even had two um
- 41:30two exams I mean a choice between two
- 41:32exam one scientific paper to read and
- 41:34one traditional question and answer type
- 41:37of exam but this takes a lot of time and
- 41:40I think that we will not do that except
- 41:42if we're very courageous anyway
- 41:45um so something new compared to last
- 41:47years and so Valentina said that there
- 41:51is a a set of lecture notes that we
- 41:54wrote with Mark miza when we were giving
- 41:56a similar but quite different actually a
- 42:00set of lectures that I got pretty
- 42:02technique a few years back uh called
- 42:04complex systems so you can of course
- 42:06success that and read that but I've
- 42:10embarked in in actually writing
- 42:13lecture notes for this to take down
- 42:18lectures
- 42:20um so it's not finished far from it it's
- 42:22in construction but I have a few
- 42:24chapters
- 42:25that are already written and they're not
- 42:30final in the sense that I am still I
- 42:34don't have the figures there are no
- 42:36references and
- 42:38um but maybe they are going to be useful
- 42:40nevertheless so I'll give them to
- 42:43Valentina so that you can access them
- 42:46and of course
- 42:48um Sciences they're in primary form and
- 42:51I'm sure that your feedback will uh help
- 42:56improving these lecture notes for her
- 42:58the laser generation of students and
- 43:01possibly hopefully writing a real book
- 43:05out of them
- 43:07okay so that's about it for the kind of
- 43:10General introduction so let's now
- 43:13dive into uh more technical stuff just
- 43:18repeating to start with things that I've
- 43:20said
- 43:21in in words before uh now trying to be a
- 43:25little more concrete so the standard
- 43:28Paradigm both in in physics
- 43:32uh
- 43:33let's say most of the 20th century
- 43:37physics before 1960 or 70s say was built
- 43:41around ideas of equilibrium of gaussian
- 43:43fluctuations around the equilibrium
- 43:46and continuous Dynamics so I've shown
- 43:48already this marble in a bowl type of
- 43:52Paradigm so harmonic oscillator if you
- 43:56want and so in physics the usual
- 43:59description of that is through What's
- 44:01called the longer equation so the larger
- 44:03equation tells you that the evolution of
- 44:06the position of a of a particles for
- 44:08example a one-dimensional
- 44:11marble in the one-dimensional bowl if
- 44:14you if you want is given by two terms
- 44:17and we'll see that in different contexts
- 44:20later on
- 44:21What's called the false term a drift
- 44:23term that's a deterministic part of the
- 44:25evolution
- 44:27and in this particular case f is just
- 44:29minus K times x so it's a harmonic Force
- 44:33pulling back the particle towards the
- 44:36equilibrium at x equals zero but on top
- 44:39of this restoring Force
- 44:43which is very generic which just says
- 44:45that equilibrium is stable and so there
- 44:47are forces bringing back the system's
- 44:50house equilibrium of course this is
- 44:52one-dimensional but you can imagine that
- 44:54this is true also for higher dimensional
- 44:56systems but then on top of that there's
- 44:59usually what's called a larger noise in
- 45:01physics that is something random
- 45:03that mimics again in physics the role of
- 45:06temperature the role of
- 45:08unpredictable shocks with uh thermal
- 45:12molecules that agitate the system and in
- 45:16this Largemouth noise can have a very
- 45:19important consequence on the long-term
- 45:22evolution of the system but in this
- 45:24particular case in the case of a
- 45:26harmonica Slater nothing much can happen
- 45:28because when the particle moves too far
- 45:31because of the effect of the long run
- 45:33noise it's brought back Towers the
- 45:35origin by the harmonic force and so in
- 45:38the end what you find if you solve this
- 45:40simple linear language equation
- 45:44is that the position of the particle
- 45:46across time does like this so it
- 45:49fluctuates with some correlation time so
- 45:52spend sometimes
- 45:54X positive and sometimes x negative so
- 45:57here T the x-axis is time and the y-axis
- 46:00is position
- 46:01uh and if you do the histogram of the
- 46:04different positions of the particle you
- 46:07find a
- 46:08hum-shaped gaussian curve which I'm
- 46:12going to comment in a second but as we
- 46:14know the gaussian S tails that Force
- 46:16extremely rapidly and so okay this is
- 46:19the the standard Paradigm nothing much
- 46:21happens there are fluctuations no
- 46:24extreme events uh extreme events are
- 46:27suppressed
- 46:28very forcefully by the drop of the
- 46:30gaussian distribution and that's that's
- 46:33the standard Paradigm as I said again in
- 46:36many economics model that's the way the
- 46:39world is pictured there's an equilibrium
- 46:41and shocks that are not thermal but due
- 46:44to anything that you cannot describe
- 46:47fully so something happening maybe the
- 46:52covid maybe an earthquake maybe uh
- 46:54something else less extreme and and then
- 46:58evolution of the economic system as a
- 47:00whole is of course slightly more
- 47:03complicated but basically given by the
- 47:05same type of harmonic Force description
- 47:09and then the non-standard pipeline that
- 47:12as I said emerged in physics already
- 47:14some decades ago and in fact in
- 47:18economics as well but without having
- 47:21such an impact on the on on the
- 47:23discipline
- 47:25is a is a paradigm where things are out
- 47:28of equilibrium rather than close to
- 47:29equilibrium uh there are fat tails in
- 47:32the distribution uh
- 47:35trajectories have discontinuities and so
- 47:37here I'm showing something that will
- 47:40comment on later which is called the
- 47:42levy flight and think of that as for
- 47:44example a model of financial markets
- 47:47where
- 47:48the trajectory seems to be some somehow
- 47:51regular and then there are jumps of all
- 47:54sizes uh in the on the bottom graph here
- 47:58you see just the derivative or the
- 48:00numerical derivative of the
- 48:03of the blue line where you see these
- 48:05huge spikes corresponding to uh
- 48:08important events and
- 48:11um
- 48:11and the idea that the gaussian
- 48:13distribution or thin tail distribution
- 48:16more generally are not necessarily
- 48:19um
- 48:20the rule in that other types of
- 48:23distribution more much more violent can
- 48:27be relevant has been actually has a long
- 48:32history in science starting with uh like
- 48:35Paul Levy who was a mathematician and
- 48:37I'll speak about olivi's
- 48:40uh theorem about the central limit
- 48:44theorem in the case when there are fat
- 48:46sales I'll come back to that later
- 48:48Mandel brought
- 48:50whom I guess many of you have heard
- 48:53about has also pushed in that direction
- 48:55in particular for financial markets as
- 48:58early as uh 1963
- 49:01many others and here I want to quote
- 49:04famous economists at least someone
- 49:08I think was maybe physicists don't know
- 49:12enough Keynes Keynes is the analog I
- 49:15would say of uh people like I don't know
- 49:17pain man in physics I mean someone who
- 49:19has had a tremendous vision and on the
- 49:23things that you are already
- 49:27breathtaking in a sense and so he wrote
- 49:30in the 30s we are faced at every time
- 49:32speaking about economics and social
- 49:35systems well faced at every time with
- 49:37the problems of discreetness of
- 49:38discontinuity the whole is not equal to
- 49:41the sum of Parts small changes produce
- 49:44large effects the assumptions of a
- 49:45uniform and homogeneousb Continuum are
- 49:48not satisfied so you see that in these
- 49:51sentences you already have all the ideas
- 49:53that I've alluded to and all the ideas
- 49:56of complex systems as well oops
- 50:00sorry
- 50:01the whole is not equal to the sum of the
- 50:04parts this is really the idea that there
- 50:06are emergent phenomena that we cannot
- 50:08anticipate if you are only looking at
- 50:11particles but you there's there's a
- 50:14another level of description where
- 50:16complete new stuff happens and and this
- 50:19idea that
- 50:20um Continuum descriptions are not
- 50:22necessarily uh valid and my little graph
- 50:26here of uh of a trajectory with jumps
- 50:29shows you that indeed there are
- 50:31sometimes objects that cannot be
- 50:34considered as as discontinuous in the
- 50:37and that's going to be important so I'm
- 50:39now going to move to the board
- 50:41and then come back to the screen with
- 50:44more
- 50:45um examples
- 50:49of things I want to show to you soon
- 50:53okay
- 50:54so do you see the board and
- 50:57so I have written the general outline of
- 51:01last lecture
- 51:03introduction two types of distribution
- 51:05many examples generalized CLT Central
- 51:08limits here and concentration but at
- 51:10this stage I would like to you to tell
- 51:12me if it's too small or if it's okay
- 51:15otherwise I can write
- 51:18bigger
- 51:21so can you give me feedback about the
- 51:23size of I think a bit bigger would be it
- 51:26would be better even though I can read
- 51:28it but uh I think a slightly bigger
- 51:30would be more okay okay fine fine
- 51:33because it's very difficult to know
- 51:34exactly what you see so so I'll write
- 51:38bigger
- 51:39okay
- 51:55so I can hear you if you if you don't
- 51:58see done something and Valentino also
- 52:01tell me if something goes wrong so of
- 52:03course it's the first time ever I'm
- 52:05doing this the lecture on the board with
- 52:07uh nobody listening
- 52:09so don't hesitate to shout or to write
- 52:12something on the chat and then Valentina
- 52:14will will intervene
- 52:17Okay so
- 52:19as I've just shown you there are
- 52:22two two broad types of phenomena one is
- 52:26the kind of gauten Paradigm where
- 52:29um things are continuous where
- 52:31distributions have entailed and then
- 52:35this continuous phenomena with fat tails
- 52:37and so what the first thing I want to
- 52:39express more mathematically is
- 52:42is to describe two types of probability
- 52:46distributions so I'm going to write that
- 52:49X is a random variable
- 52:59so X is a continuous random variable so
- 53:02it could be the position of a particle
- 53:04it could be
- 53:05the wealth of an individual it could be
- 53:09whatever you want
- 53:10and I'm going to distinguish
- 53:14thin-tailed
- 53:19distribution
- 53:26from fat tail distribution
- 53:40so the random variable X will be
- 53:42distributed according some to some
- 53:45density rho of X so as usual
- 53:49rho of X is such that the probability to
- 53:52find X within a small interval X X Plus
- 53:56DX is given by row of X DX
- 54:01and fin tail distributions are
- 54:03essentially distribution such that all
- 54:06the moments of X are finite
- 54:10so I'm going to call
- 54:12MN is the nth moment of X so it's
- 54:15defined as the integral
- 54:18from minus infinity to plus infinity
- 54:21maybe some sometimes a variable is
- 54:23positive so it means that row of X is
- 54:26zero for x negative but in general
- 54:29I'm integrating over all possible values
- 54:32of X so the moment of X the nth moment
- 54:36of X is integral DX x to the N Ro of x
- 54:43and for this moment to be finite
- 54:46requires rho of x to Decay fast enough
- 54:49when X goes to Infinity
- 54:52because otherwise this integral may not
- 54:55be convergent and we'll see examples of
- 54:57that
- 54:59so instead of you know remaining
- 55:01completely General let me give examples
- 55:04so as I just said the most famous thin
- 55:08tail distribution is the gaussian so
- 55:11uh row gaussian of X so capital G is for
- 55:15gaussian so would be 1 over square root
- 55:19of 2 pi Sigma squared exponential of
- 55:23minus x minus m
- 55:26squared over 2 Sigma squared
- 55:30and of course this has a famous
- 55:34Bell shapes with a very thin tail
- 55:41you go back to the thinness of the tails
- 55:44in a second so the distribution is
- 55:46centered around its mean M and has a
- 55:50width
- 55:51Sigma and actually more technically M1
- 55:55the first moment of the gaussian is
- 55:58equal to m
- 55:59and and to the second moment is M
- 56:03squared plus Sigma squared
- 56:08okay but all MNS are finite
- 56:14because the the decay of the gaussians
- 56:18for large x
- 56:19is sufficiently fast to kill the growth
- 56:23of x to the N for any finite n
- 56:27and so okay
- 56:30um just to give you an illustration of
- 56:33uh how fast this distribution decays if
- 56:36you're looking at What's called the 10
- 56:37Sigma event so if you're looking at an
- 56:40event that is
- 56:43greater than M plus so got that I need
- 56:48to write bigger
- 56:51[Music]
- 56:56so if I look at an event X star which is
- 57:00greater than M plus 10 Sigma
- 57:05then the the probability to observe such
- 57:08an event is uh 10 to the minus 22
- 57:14so if you're you know 10 Sigma away that
- 57:17means okay uh far but not that far from
- 57:21well it's usually yes
- 57:24um just for your information uh you're
- 57:26you're out of the uh of the screen I
- 57:28think at least for me
- 57:31um myself or the what I write so
- 57:34yourself and actually I can I can read
- 57:37the 10 but not the exponent of the 10.
- 57:39okay okay thank you I'm not sure
- 57:42so are you because if hydro line here
- 57:45it's okay
- 57:46it's still a bit too far right
- 57:50okay so I'll try not to go beyond that
- 57:53sorry for these technical glitches that
- 57:56are bound to happen in the first lecture
- 57:58Okay so
- 58:00so what I'm saying is that such an event
- 58:02has a probability 10 to the minus 22
- 58:05and to give you an idea the number of
- 58:08seconds since the universe is born is
- 58:10around 10 to the 16. so if you have an
- 58:14event that happens according to a
- 58:17gaussian distribution every second
- 58:19it would still have less than one chance
- 58:22in a Million
- 58:23to uh happen in within a gaussian
- 58:26distribution so this tells you that in
- 58:29practice
- 58:30uh if you have a gaussian distribution
- 58:32if you describe things with the gaussian
- 58:33distribution events like 10 Sigma events
- 58:36uh should actually never happen
- 58:40um okay so now I see I see the screen
- 58:43thank you for uh printing this out to me
- 58:48um okay so you know you if you're for
- 58:52example if you do risk control risk
- 58:54modeling in financial markets and use
- 58:57the gaussian distribution
- 58:58uh then you're bound to make something
- 59:02wrong because the 10 Sigma events
- 59:04actually happen very frequently in
- 59:06financial markets and so
- 59:09just knowing that means that a gaussian
- 59:12distribution won't work for describing
- 59:14how financial markets evolve but still
- 59:18you may be surprised to know that this
- 59:21gaussian distribution for financial
- 59:23Market is still very much the standard
- 59:26Paradigm at least when you hear about
- 59:29financial markets in mathematical
- 59:31Finance lectures the whole description
- 59:34is built around gaussian distributions
- 59:39okay another example is the exponential
- 59:42distribution or the LaPlace distribution
- 59:43rho of X row L of X which is Theta of X
- 59:49Theta is a heavy side function so it's a
- 59:51zero if x is negative
- 59:54times exponential of minus Lambda X
- 59:59so this happens very frequently that the
- 1:00:01a random variable is distributed as an
- 1:00:05exponential and here again all the
- 1:00:07moments are are finite
- 1:00:12so the mean of this distribution for
- 1:00:15example is given by 1 over Lambda so
- 1:00:17there's a Lambda missing
- 1:00:19or the distribution to be normalized
- 1:00:22so for example M1
- 1:00:25is equal to 1 over Lambda
- 1:00:31okay and so
- 1:00:33clearly there are there's an infinite
- 1:00:35family of uh of entail distribution
- 1:00:39um and I just give you two examples that
- 1:00:42come up uh frequently and I want to give
- 1:00:46you examples of fat tail distribution so
- 1:00:48fat tail distribution will be
- 1:00:49distribution such that some of the
- 1:00:52moments diverge
- 1:00:54so for example
- 1:00:57I'm going to start with a symmetric
- 1:01:00distribution uh the student T
- 1:01:02distribution rho of x
- 1:01:05is a certain normalization
- 1:01:09that I won't write out explicitly
- 1:01:14divided by a squared plus x squared to
- 1:01:17the power 1 minus 1 plus mu over 2.
- 1:01:21so for example
- 1:01:24maybe some of you know the case mu equal
- 1:01:27one
- 1:01:28and that's a cushy distribution
- 1:01:37and the generalization for arbitrary
- 1:01:39values of mu is called the student T
- 1:01:41distribution
- 1:01:49what you see is that when X becomes
- 1:01:51large so again this distribution is
- 1:01:54symmetric it's uh it only depends on x
- 1:01:56squared so if x becomes large either on
- 1:01:59the positive side or on the negative
- 1:02:01side
- 1:02:02asymptotically rho s of x
- 1:02:05decays as 1 over X the one plus mu
- 1:02:12so can you still see the MU yes just
- 1:02:16so so maybe I could
- 1:02:26yeah okay
- 1:02:31so it has a what's called a parallel
- 1:02:33tail
- 1:02:38foreign
- 1:02:42so you see that if I try to integrate x
- 1:02:47to the n
- 1:02:49multiplied by one of x to the one plus
- 1:02:52mu
- 1:02:53then the integral will fail to converge
- 1:02:56if n is too large
- 1:02:58and you can quickly check that
- 1:03:02only
- 1:03:04moments
- 1:03:06foreign
- 1:03:14are convergence
- 1:03:17so if the moment
- 1:03:19if the order of the moment n is less
- 1:03:21than this power load exponent
- 1:03:24table exponent so I'm going to you'll
- 1:03:27see uh I'm trying to keep a consistent
- 1:03:30notation for this uh tail exponent mu
- 1:03:34I'll always call MU
- 1:03:36uh
- 1:03:37this object that appears in the in the
- 1:03:40tail and if n is less than mu then the
- 1:03:43moment converges but if n is larger than
- 1:03:46mu the moment diverges so it means for
- 1:03:49example that if mu
- 1:03:51is less than one
- 1:03:53then even the mean doesn't exist
- 1:03:57the mean
- 1:03:59is Divergence
- 1:04:06and if mu is less than two
- 1:04:08the variance
- 1:04:10is Divergent
- 1:04:16so more generally mu describes the speed
- 1:04:19at which the power law
- 1:04:21s off at infinity and if mu is small it
- 1:04:26folds up very slowly if mu is large it
- 1:04:29falls quicker
- 1:04:31actually formally you can show that I
- 1:04:34mean there's a scaling to to be made but
- 1:04:37in the limit where mu goes to Infinity
- 1:04:41there's a way to take the limit
- 1:04:43correctly such that the student T
- 1:04:45becomes the gaussian
- 1:04:52so it's an interesting family of
- 1:04:53distribution that interpolates between
- 1:04:56the gaussian in some limits and the
- 1:04:58cushy distribution in another limit but
- 1:05:00for all finite values of mu
- 1:05:03um it has parallel tails and some of the
- 1:05:06moments diverge so this uh
- 1:05:11this distinction between mu less than
- 1:05:14one mu less than two and mu greater than
- 1:05:162 is going to come up uh in a second
- 1:05:20when we describe
- 1:05:22in a few minutes when we describe the
- 1:05:24central limit theorem and its
- 1:05:26generalization
- 1:05:27generalizations and you'll see that this
- 1:05:30is not I mean for many years even in
- 1:05:33physics people didn't really pay
- 1:05:34attention to these distributions because
- 1:05:36it was kind of
- 1:05:38a pre-assumption that surely a
- 1:05:41distribution must have a finite moment
- 1:05:44or and surely must have a fine adherence
- 1:05:46but you'll see many examples where this
- 1:05:48is actually not the case
- 1:05:51another famous Hollow distribution
- 1:05:56is the Pareto distribution and I'm going
- 1:05:59to speak about Pi 2 in a second so rho P
- 1:06:02of x
- 1:06:03is equal to Mu
- 1:06:06x0 to the MU over x to the 1 plus mu
- 1:06:10for X greater or equal and x0
- 1:06:15and 0 otherwise
- 1:06:25so this distribution is for
- 1:06:28variables that all
- 1:06:30in general positive greater than the x0
- 1:06:33is assumed to be positive here
- 1:06:38so
- 1:06:40um its origin comes from pareto's
- 1:06:43description and I'm I'll show you in a
- 1:06:46second of wealth distributions or income
- 1:06:48distribution and he showed emporically
- 1:06:51at the beginning of the 20th century
- 1:06:53that actually wealth or income is not at
- 1:06:57all distributed according to an
- 1:07:00exponential or aggression but actually
- 1:07:01has fat tails has a parallel tails and
- 1:07:06that's the traditionally now
- 1:07:09how we call this this type this
- 1:07:11distribution here is a it's a python
- 1:07:14distribution
- 1:07:15and
- 1:07:17of course the same discussion I just
- 1:07:19gave here about the values of new apply
- 1:07:22for the python distribution which has is
- 1:07:25in a sense of pure parallel it has
- 1:07:27nothing no other Behavior than a
- 1:07:30parallel because either it's a power a
- 1:07:31pure power law here for X greater than
- 1:07:34x0 or it's zero
- 1:07:36whereas the student distribution is only
- 1:07:37a parallel asymptotically
- 1:07:42okay
- 1:07:44so let me give you
- 1:07:46um
- 1:07:47more information about
- 1:07:51such random variables and in particular
- 1:07:55already something that distinguishes
- 1:07:58them
- 1:07:59very strongly is
- 1:08:02the way the maximum of n random
- 1:08:06variables
- 1:08:07behaves as a function of n so I'm going
- 1:08:10to draw n
- 1:08:16the values of X so X1
- 1:08:19to
- 1:08:21xn okay
- 1:08:24and one natural question in many
- 1:08:26contexts is to ask
- 1:08:27so what's the maximum value of these
- 1:08:30random variables and I'm going to call
- 1:08:33capital m n
- 1:08:35like the max is the max
- 1:08:39from I equal one
- 1:08:41to n
- 1:08:44of the excise
- 1:08:46okay
- 1:08:49so this you know the menu circumstances
- 1:08:52where you might ask what is the largest
- 1:08:55of n random variables so if you're
- 1:08:57interested in building a dam for example
- 1:09:00on the river you may ask about the flaws
- 1:09:04and the level of
- 1:09:06of the river every every winter and so
- 1:09:10if you have an observation of I don't
- 1:09:12know A Century of data you have a
- 1:09:15hundred value of the maximum height
- 1:09:17maximum level of the of the river during
- 1:09:21a given winter
- 1:09:23and you might might ask well what's the
- 1:09:26maximum over the century of of this
- 1:09:29level and how should I expect
- 1:09:32the dependence of n to carry on in the
- 1:09:35future
- 1:09:36so can I extrapolate and think of what
- 1:09:40is going to be the maximum level over uh
- 1:09:43a thousand years for example
- 1:09:45but there are obviously many other
- 1:09:49contexts in which you're interested in
- 1:09:51the max again financial markets if you
- 1:09:54have a portfolio and you look at the
- 1:09:57change of value of your portfolio from
- 1:09:58one day to the next then of course
- 1:10:01you're interested in knowing uh what
- 1:10:03what the worst that can happen and so
- 1:10:06you're going to ask about the maximum of
- 1:10:09of these uh random variables which are
- 1:10:12daily returns of your investment
- 1:10:16and so
- 1:10:17I'm gonna I'm not going to uh do the
- 1:10:20math but uh maybe that's the first
- 1:10:22exercise you can think about how would
- 1:10:25you prove the result that I'm going to
- 1:10:27give you
- 1:10:29um well in the gaussian case
- 1:10:32when n goes to Infinity
- 1:10:36m n
- 1:10:38grows like Sigma square root of 2 log m
- 1:10:46so you see that clearly the more I
- 1:10:51pick variables the larger n is
- 1:10:55the larger I expect the maximum of of
- 1:10:58these random variables to be because the
- 1:11:01more I try the more accidentally I may
- 1:11:04find a large value
- 1:11:06but you see that in the gaussian case
- 1:11:08this growth is
- 1:11:11excruciatingly slow I mean log n is
- 1:11:14already a slow function here it's square
- 1:11:16root of log n the way it grows as
- 1:11:18impossible and of course this
- 1:11:22the square root of log n reflects the
- 1:11:24fact that the tail of the gaussian is so
- 1:11:27quickly decaying it's the same
- 1:11:29information as what the one I was giving
- 1:11:32you before if the probability to find 10
- 1:11:35Sigma is a 10 to the minus 22 event you
- 1:11:38you must have a very large number of
- 1:11:40observables in order to see it so the
- 1:11:43maximum value grows only very very
- 1:11:45slowly
- 1:11:47if you look at the LaPlace distribution
- 1:11:50you find that MN
- 1:11:54froze as a 1 over Lambda log n
- 1:12:01so still flow
- 1:12:02I shouldn't change notation so let me
- 1:12:05write logs like this
- 1:12:08so still slow but a little faster than
- 1:12:11the gaussian
- 1:12:13now if you look at student or Pareto
- 1:12:17the growth is much faster and you find
- 1:12:21that
- 1:12:23foreign
- 1:12:25the largest event random variables grows
- 1:12:27as n to the power 1 over mu
- 1:12:31note for example that if mu is less than
- 1:12:34one
- 1:12:35which as you remember is the case where
- 1:12:38the mean is Divergent
- 1:12:41MN
- 1:12:43grows faster
- 1:12:48than n
- 1:12:53so if n is greater than one then the
- 1:12:56maximum grows slower than the number of
- 1:12:58terms that you've drawn but if mu is
- 1:13:01less than one it grows even faster
- 1:13:09Excuse me yes so are we talking about
- 1:13:14um because you're writing it it's
- 1:13:16equivalent to so are we talking about on
- 1:13:19average or is it uh yes thank you for
- 1:13:22the question so so this is yeah exactly
- 1:13:24so thank you I was going to make that uh
- 1:13:27slightly clearer in a second so this is
- 1:13:31you know in order of magnitude type of
- 1:13:33arguments so if you ask okay what's the
- 1:13:36typical order of magnitude of of MN in
- 1:13:39these cases then these are the results
- 1:13:41that you should remember but of course
- 1:13:43one can be much more precise than this
- 1:13:45and ask what is the probability key of
- 1:13:49MN
- 1:13:50knowing n
- 1:13:52and uh and you can actually give much
- 1:13:57more precise characterization of these
- 1:13:59MNS in particular uh in the gaussian
- 1:14:02case or in the uh in the LaPlace case if
- 1:14:07you shift MN by its average value or
- 1:14:13these these quantities here you find
- 1:14:16that the the little residual once
- 1:14:18rescaled has a universal distribution
- 1:14:20but I don't want to go too much into the
- 1:14:22details so you can think of these two as
- 1:14:26the average value of the maximum because
- 1:14:28of course the maximum won't be the same
- 1:14:30if you draw another sample of X but if
- 1:14:34you're if you're interested in the
- 1:14:36average or the typical order of
- 1:14:37magnitude this is good enough in the
- 1:14:39case of parallel variables then it's
- 1:14:42more subtle because the average itself
- 1:14:45might not exist so if you want to think
- 1:14:48of that say as the median uh yeah in all
- 1:14:53cases maybe the median would be the
- 1:14:57simplest way to describe what I mean by
- 1:14:59by approximately equals let's say that's
- 1:15:02median
- 1:15:04okay thank you
- 1:15:08okay so let me give you two more
- 1:15:11um
- 1:15:13uh
- 1:15:16information about about this one is
- 1:15:21um this question of the maximum can be
- 1:15:23generalized you can ask something about
- 1:15:27what's
- 1:15:29the median value say of the nth largest
- 1:15:33as a function of n
- 1:15:36okay
- 1:15:37so let's uh reorder these random
- 1:15:41variable X1 x n
- 1:15:44into y1 which is
- 1:15:48Max
- 1:15:50of x i
- 1:15:52larger than Y2 larger than Etc
- 1:15:57so y1 is the largest Y2 this is the
- 1:16:00second largest and so on and you can ask
- 1:16:03a more detailed question not about the
- 1:16:06the largest one but
- 1:16:08the the value of the nth largest one and
- 1:16:12again you could ask about the full
- 1:16:14distribution of this object but here
- 1:16:17what you uh just need to know is that
- 1:16:21the only thing you need to do here
- 1:16:24is to divide
- 1:16:26the little n large n by by Little M
- 1:16:31and this is true
- 1:16:33when n
- 1:16:38is much less than capital M
- 1:16:42so this simple rule of changing capital
- 1:16:45N into capital N over small N is a rule
- 1:16:48of thumb that only
- 1:16:49Works in this regime when small n
- 1:16:53Becomes of the order of capital n and
- 1:16:55it's not as simple
- 1:16:59okay so what you see what you can see
- 1:17:02from from these expressions
- 1:17:05is that if you're interested in the Gap
- 1:17:08Delta between the largest
- 1:17:12and the second largest
- 1:17:16then these distributions uh thin or or
- 1:17:19fat behave very differently in the sense
- 1:17:22that
- 1:17:25for the gaussian or the LaPlace
- 1:17:27distribution
- 1:17:28let's say for the gaussian distribution
- 1:17:30this Gap goes down
- 1:17:34with n
- 1:17:39whereas for a
- 1:17:41student entire to the Gap increases
- 1:17:45within
- 1:17:46foreign
- 1:17:52it remains constant
- 1:18:04so that's another interesting
- 1:18:06characterization of these fat tail
- 1:18:08distribution is that the the difference
- 1:18:10between the largest and the second
- 1:18:12largest
- 1:18:14is bigger and bigger as n increases so
- 1:18:17there's more and more contrast between
- 1:18:20the champion and the vice Champion if
- 1:18:23you want for these parallel
- 1:18:25distributions whereas for the gaussian
- 1:18:27distribution is the other way around
- 1:18:28that when the size increases there's
- 1:18:33less and less difference between
- 1:18:35the champion and the second champion and
- 1:18:38the vice champion
- 1:18:40foreign
- 1:18:45ly say something that I'll repeat later
- 1:18:49or maybe okay I'll I'll skip that for
- 1:18:52the moment and mention that
- 1:18:55inappropriate so maybe it's a good time
- 1:18:58to make a pause
- 1:19:00so what I propose is that
- 1:19:03um
- 1:19:03we reconvene in in 15 minutes
- 1:19:07and continue
- 1:19:09uh with uh
- 1:19:12with what I had to say and and show you
- 1:19:14data okay is there any question in the
- 1:19:17chat or
- 1:19:20so is it big enough to screen now yes I
- 1:19:22think it is
- 1:19:26okay so see you in 15 minutes
- 1:19:55excuse me
- 1:20:00foreign
- 1:36:52welcome back everybody
- 1:36:56all right
- 1:36:57I hope that with the
- 1:37:00white uh Cloud here you're still going
- 1:37:03to see my writing let's see
- 1:37:06otherwise I'll use water
- 1:37:10okay
- 1:37:11um
- 1:37:12can you still hear me are you around
- 1:37:21yes okay good
- 1:37:27foreign
- 1:37:31this this whole stuff here is to allow
- 1:37:35you to understand what I'm going to show
- 1:37:36you uh in terms of empirical data
- 1:37:41and of course this is also going to be
- 1:37:43useful from a theoretical point of view
- 1:37:46but but I'm going to show you are plots
- 1:37:49that elicit these parallel distributions
- 1:37:54and so before giving you I'm showing you
- 1:37:57these plots I need to explain to you
- 1:38:00what is plotted
- 1:38:01and so in order to see uh the tale of
- 1:38:05these distributions
- 1:38:07because we expect
- 1:38:09paulos maybe in the Tails but not
- 1:38:12certainly not everywhere
- 1:38:14people usually plot two different
- 1:38:18objects that are actually very closely
- 1:38:20related so let me start with what people
- 1:38:23call zip slots
- 1:38:29after Mr zip
- 1:38:32who did that for um distribution of the
- 1:38:36frequency of words
- 1:38:38in a in a written Corpus
- 1:38:41for example
- 1:38:43the number of times the V appears in
- 1:38:46Ulysses I'll show you data so what you
- 1:38:49do is
- 1:38:50you actually
- 1:38:52rank your data you start ranking the
- 1:38:55data you so you have a fast
- 1:38:58observation of unranked data which is
- 1:39:01the X1 xn
- 1:39:05and then you rank them
- 1:39:07and what you do is
- 1:39:10you plot
- 1:39:13the log
- 1:39:15of y m
- 1:39:18as a function of small n over capital n
- 1:39:23so it's a sorry of the log of small n
- 1:39:26over capital n
- 1:39:28so this is a very natural idea right
- 1:39:30it's the thing that you would do
- 1:39:31actually a lot of data is presented in a
- 1:39:34ranked way so for example if you look at
- 1:39:37uh the most the hundred most uh wealthy
- 1:39:41man in the on the planet or uh whatever
- 1:39:45it's usually already ranked so it's a
- 1:39:49very natural temptation to say okay what
- 1:39:51happens if I plot
- 1:39:54why as of the the amplitude of the rank
- 1:39:57variable as a function of its Rank and
- 1:40:00what you find is that
- 1:40:02because there's noise but if you have a
- 1:40:05parallel tail
- 1:40:06then in a log log representation
- 1:40:09it looks like a straight line and the
- 1:40:12slope of this straight line is
- 1:40:15minus one over mu
- 1:40:17why well it's it's because exactly what
- 1:40:20you're doing
- 1:40:21this right
- 1:40:24and I should add uh
- 1:40:27okay let me change notation here to be
- 1:40:29consistent and not erase everything
- 1:40:32output small n as a second
- 1:40:40so you see that
- 1:40:44this result here tells you that as a
- 1:40:47function of small n this is a function
- 1:40:49of the rank you expect the amplitude to
- 1:40:52decay
- 1:40:53as 1 over n to the one over mu
- 1:40:56and so if you plot the log of the
- 1:40:58amplitude y as a function of log n then
- 1:41:03you get the slope
- 1:41:04minus 1 over mu
- 1:41:08um so that's that's one way people
- 1:41:10present the data there's another which
- 1:41:12as you'll see is completely equivalent
- 1:41:14there's another way which is based on
- 1:41:16the empirical
- 1:41:21cumulative distribution function CDF
- 1:41:27so what you do is to try to determine
- 1:41:32empirically what I always write P
- 1:41:35greater than as a substrate of X which
- 1:41:38is by definition the integral from X to
- 1:41:40Infinity of d y rho of Y
- 1:41:45okay
- 1:41:46so it counts so P sub of X is the
- 1:41:50probability to find an observable larger
- 1:41:52than x
- 1:41:54and a way to reconstruct this object
- 1:41:58from empirical data a very standard way
- 1:42:01is
- 1:42:03the following
- 1:42:06so you put again
- 1:42:09the largest
- 1:42:10observable
- 1:42:12y1 here the second largest here and so
- 1:42:17on Y3
- 1:42:18and the empirical
- 1:42:21distribution CDF
- 1:42:24is constructed
- 1:42:27by
- 1:42:29putting zero
- 1:42:31for X greater than y1
- 1:42:33then 1 over n between y1 and 1 2 2 over
- 1:42:38n between
- 1:42:39Y2 and Y3 and so on so it's a step
- 1:42:42function that grows
- 1:42:45in steps of 1 over n one over capital n
- 1:42:49every time you encounter
- 1:42:52an empirical variable and it makes a lot
- 1:42:55of sense right the probability the
- 1:42:56empirical probability to find something
- 1:42:58larger than y1 is zero the probability
- 1:43:01to find something larger than y two is
- 1:43:04one so there's one event so it's one of
- 1:43:07Rand and so on okay
- 1:43:09so that's the way people uh reconstruct
- 1:43:12empirical
- 1:43:15cdfs
- 1:43:16and there's a long story about
- 1:43:19statistical testing
- 1:43:21that is determining whether an empirical
- 1:43:24distribution is compatible with a
- 1:43:27theoretical distribution or with an
- 1:43:29another empirical distribution for that
- 1:43:32matter
- 1:43:33and so there's a variety of tests the
- 1:43:35most famous one is is called The
- 1:43:38Commodore graph spinoff test
- 1:43:41foreign
- 1:43:54test which is quite nice
- 1:43:57but these tests are all based on
- 1:44:01um I mean many of these tests are based
- 1:44:03on on this construction of the empirical
- 1:44:06distribution
- 1:44:07anyway if you think a little bit for two
- 1:44:10seconds you'll realize that this object
- 1:44:15here
- 1:44:15is just this one flipped around the x
- 1:44:19equal y axis so if I if I make a flip of
- 1:44:23this object
- 1:44:25by the Symmetry around the 45 degree
- 1:44:28axis I'm reconstructing exactly a zip
- 1:44:31plot
- 1:44:32so it's really a matter of taste and
- 1:44:35presentation and in particular if you do
- 1:44:39a long log representation then you'll
- 1:44:42get a straight line as well but instead
- 1:44:44of having a straight line of slope minus
- 1:44:471 over mu in this case the slope
- 1:44:51will be minus mu
- 1:44:55okay
- 1:44:58the reason it's minus mu is because for
- 1:45:01a parallel tail distribution if you
- 1:45:03inject rho of Y
- 1:45:05equals 1 over y to the one plus mu then
- 1:45:08P larger than or a parallel tail is
- 1:45:12proportional to
- 1:45:13x to the minus mu
- 1:45:17okay this is just the anti
- 1:45:19antiderivative of one over x to the one
- 1:45:22plus b so that the minus mu here is the
- 1:45:24slope okay
- 1:45:27foreign
- 1:45:30so before showing you data I want to
- 1:45:34also justify the fact that parallel
- 1:45:36Tails parallel distributions are also
- 1:45:39often called scale free distributions
- 1:45:55okay and this is important because
- 1:45:58you'll see many examples where
- 1:46:01one gets a parallel distribution because
- 1:46:04there's a physical scale in the system
- 1:46:06that disappears and uh and and the logic
- 1:46:12here is that if
- 1:46:15you look at a parallel distribution and
- 1:46:18you're interested in the following
- 1:46:19question what is the probability to
- 1:46:22observe an event larger than 10 times x
- 1:46:26relative to the priority to observe an
- 1:46:28event of size X okay
- 1:46:32so I'm asking in the case of the Python
- 1:46:36question the parietal wealth
- 1:46:38distribution question what is the
- 1:46:40priority to to observe someone earning
- 1:46:43or uh
- 1:46:45owning 10 million dollars compared to
- 1:46:49the property to find someone who only
- 1:46:51owns more than one million dollars
- 1:46:54well
- 1:46:56the nice property of these parallel
- 1:46:58distribution is that
- 1:47:01for a student or paito or whatever
- 1:47:05parallel distribution this is equal to
- 1:47:0810 to the minus mu
- 1:47:10independent of x
- 1:47:17and that's where this scale free ID
- 1:47:19comes from is independently of the scale
- 1:47:22at which you're looking at this
- 1:47:23distribution
- 1:47:25relative quantity is relative
- 1:47:26frequencies are completely independent
- 1:47:29of the scale
- 1:47:31of course and I'm going to insist on
- 1:47:33that in a second when you have a
- 1:47:35parallel distribution a parallel tail
- 1:47:38it's only valid empirically within some
- 1:47:41range and so this idea of scale 3 is
- 1:47:46valid in the same range where the
- 1:47:48parallel distribution holds
- 1:47:51and this should be compared for example
- 1:47:53to the LaPlace case if you compute this
- 1:47:55for the LaPlace case you find
- 1:47:57exponential of minus
- 1:47:599 Lambda times x
- 1:48:03which strongly decreases with x
- 1:48:12so what it means is that
- 1:48:14given this ratio
- 1:48:17in one case you cannot determine at what
- 1:48:19scale the measurement was done
- 1:48:22whereas in this case you can actually
- 1:48:24extract from this ratio the scale of the
- 1:48:27measurement because it still appears
- 1:48:30so in order to have a kind of vivid
- 1:48:31illustration of this let me give you the
- 1:48:34example of Jew figures
- 1:48:39Jose
- 1:48:43so as you as you know Jew is uh
- 1:48:46is water
- 1:48:49absorbing on on glass for example
- 1:48:52and so you can with a microscope look at
- 1:48:55the droplets of water
- 1:48:58that you see
- 1:49:00and
- 1:49:01in some cases you see a pretty uh mono
- 1:49:06size
- 1:49:08pattern with a droplets that all have a
- 1:49:12certain characteristic size
- 1:49:15and so what it means is that you know
- 1:49:17with your camera if you zoom too much
- 1:49:20you won't see anything anymore because
- 1:49:22otherwise either you'll be between
- 1:49:25droplets or you'll be within one droplet
- 1:49:27and so you have to choose the correct
- 1:49:29scale to look at this picture
- 1:49:32but there are cases where U is scale
- 1:49:36free
- 1:49:37in the sense that there's a
- 1:49:39superposition of very small droplets and
- 1:49:41very large droplets okay that coexist
- 1:49:45and so you have droplets of all sizes
- 1:49:48and actually if you look at the
- 1:49:50distribution of size of these droplets
- 1:49:52the distribution of the radius you find
- 1:49:54that um it's it's a parallel
- 1:49:58and in this case what it means is that
- 1:50:00provided you're in the regime where it's
- 1:50:02a parallel then independently of the
- 1:50:05zoom you will always see the same
- 1:50:07picture so the relative frequency of
- 1:50:09these very small dots that you don't see
- 1:50:12and the big drops
- 1:50:14the big droplets is exactly the same
- 1:50:17independently of the scale you've you
- 1:50:19choose to look at the picture okay so
- 1:50:22this is nice because it's a it's a
- 1:50:24visual way to think about this idea of
- 1:50:27scale free with the physical scale
- 1:50:28that's a geometric scale but this is the
- 1:50:31idea essentially okay
- 1:50:34so very importantly if you have a
- 1:50:37parallel phenomenon it means somehow
- 1:50:40that a scale has disappeared
- 1:50:42has disappeared and so this guides the
- 1:50:46the construction of models uh to to find
- 1:50:50reasons for The Disappearance of a of a
- 1:50:53length scale or any other types of
- 1:50:55skills
- 1:50:58um at this point let me
- 1:51:00insist on something that I've alluded to
- 1:51:04several times now which is that
- 1:51:08in physics we know about this but in any
- 1:51:11uh
- 1:51:13natural science observation or
- 1:51:16observation in physics in economics or
- 1:51:19in finance
- 1:51:21one never expects to have a pure
- 1:51:24parallel distribution
- 1:51:26for all X's going to Infinity one always
- 1:51:31has cut off scales and I'm going to show
- 1:51:34you uh some examples of that
- 1:51:37um that appear naturally if you think
- 1:51:40about the phenomenon so I'm going to
- 1:51:41show you for example a data on
- 1:51:44earthquakes the magnitude of earthquakes
- 1:51:46which is a beautiful parallel
- 1:51:47distribution
- 1:51:49but of course if you think a little bit
- 1:51:51about earthquakes you know that an
- 1:51:53earthquake is related to
- 1:51:55[Music]
- 1:51:56um
- 1:51:58something happening uh on the on the
- 1:52:01crust of the earth and that the crack
- 1:52:04explaining the earthquake
- 1:52:07the size of the crack is related to the
- 1:52:09amplitude of the earthquake and clearly
- 1:52:12the size of the crack cannot be larger
- 1:52:13than the size of the other planet right
- 1:52:15so clearly this fallow is not going to
- 1:52:18hold you know mathematically forever
- 1:52:20it's going to be cut off at one point
- 1:52:22and so one has to be very careful when
- 1:52:25one speaks about parallels is to try to
- 1:52:28identify the regions either a priori or
- 1:52:32empirically where you see a power but
- 1:52:35we'll see models where you can actually
- 1:52:37explicitly see that there's a parallel
- 1:52:41in some regime and then there's a
- 1:52:43cut-off which comes from the the physics
- 1:52:47or the mathematics of the model and
- 1:52:49we'll see that in the context of
- 1:52:51branching processes for example
- 1:52:53and and we know in these cases that
- 1:52:56there is indeed a cutoff Beyond which
- 1:52:58it's futile to look for a parallel
- 1:53:01because it doesn't exist so this is a
- 1:53:03very important statement because many
- 1:53:05times people try to use statistical
- 1:53:07tests like the cosmograph test to test
- 1:53:11whether the tail of the distribution is
- 1:53:13a parallel or not and you may get
- 1:53:15negative uh answer to your tests simply
- 1:53:19because you're probing the distribution
- 1:53:21in a regime where it's not any more
- 1:53:23parallel so this question of statistical
- 1:53:25test is very important because what is
- 1:53:28what you see in the literature is often
- 1:53:30a blind use of tests without asking the
- 1:53:33right questions of whether you should
- 1:53:35use the test or not or whether you
- 1:53:37should use a test with care so one
- 1:53:39should be very careful with kind of
- 1:53:41press the button type tests which in
- 1:53:45many cases is actually not adapted to
- 1:53:47the question you are asking so uh
- 1:53:50here I'm advocating a an element of
- 1:53:53judgment when you do science
- 1:53:56rather than you know blindly applying
- 1:53:59tests that are from a mathematical point
- 1:54:01of view rigorous and you'll see that the
- 1:54:03Commodore Gross Middle test provided you
- 1:54:06you give yourself some hypothesis is a
- 1:54:08very beautiful test very beautiful
- 1:54:10because it it's in a sense a universal
- 1:54:13test
- 1:54:13but um but on the other hand you
- 1:54:16shouldn't be fooled by theorems once
- 1:54:19again and you should use your judgment
- 1:54:20to know whether it makes sense to use
- 1:54:22the test or not
- 1:54:24anyway so this is my ranting about
- 1:54:27trying to be too rigorous when it's not
- 1:54:30warranted to
- 1:54:32apply rigor
- 1:54:35okay so at this point I think I have
- 1:54:39enough material
- 1:54:41to show you uh empirical data
- 1:54:46so
- 1:54:52with the quality of
- 1:54:54the video ah
- 1:55:03okay uh so I'm told that you have
- 1:55:05problems with the resolution for me on
- 1:55:08the on my screen it's perfect
- 1:55:14so are you sure it's your connection or
- 1:55:17because I I don't see how I can do it
- 1:55:20better
- 1:55:26what do you want me to do
- 1:55:31this
- 1:55:39really camera now that's image
- 1:55:44Yes actually I think the the image
- 1:55:47quality is okay for some of us so
- 1:55:50it's probably a matter of connection
- 1:55:53yeah I think it's a matter of connection
- 1:55:55we have fiber optics and it's been
- 1:55:57blurry 50 of the time
- 1:56:00I see okay I I don't know what to say
- 1:56:03this doesn't usually I'd wonder if it's
- 1:56:06not go to meeting when there are a lot
- 1:56:08of people that I don't know
- 1:56:10not as good as maybe Zoom
- 1:56:13well maybe I'm really sorry about this I
- 1:56:15can't do much because from my side I
- 1:56:17mean the camera is is focused correctly
- 1:56:20in uh
- 1:56:21I don't know the focus is good I mean
- 1:56:23when it works I I see it well but
- 1:56:26most of the time it's just blurry
- 1:56:30okay I'm really sorry about this
- 1:56:32I hope um
- 1:56:35with the sound and with election notes
- 1:56:37you'll be able to uh
- 1:56:40make for it
- 1:56:42okay so anyway I'm going to
- 1:56:46switch to uh my screen now
- 1:56:52foreign
- 1:56:55so tell me if
- 1:56:57you see it correctly now
- 1:57:08more okay never mind okay so can you see
- 1:57:12my screen correctly now
- 1:57:15someone doesn't see it please Shout
- 1:57:20okay so as promised
- 1:57:22um I'm going to start by showing you one
- 1:57:25of the best known
- 1:57:26uh result on on parallels which is the
- 1:57:31so-called
- 1:57:32um Gutenberg rishta uh distribution of
- 1:57:35earthquakes
- 1:57:36so this the the right plot here the left
- 1:57:40plot here that I'm showing with my mouse
- 1:57:43is
- 1:57:45um as a function of time
- 1:57:47the amplitude of the released energy of
- 1:57:51uh earthquakes that are detected
- 1:57:54and so what you see is that
- 1:57:58um there's there are many actually many
- 1:58:00earthquakes some of them you don't even
- 1:58:02see
- 1:58:04and and then some big ones
- 1:58:06and you can trust me and we'll see uh
- 1:58:09explicit pictures of that later is that
- 1:58:12if you zoom for example on this little
- 1:58:15subpart here you'll see a pattern that's
- 1:58:17very similar to the big one and actually
- 1:58:19if you even if you zoom on smaller
- 1:58:22portions of the time series and you blow
- 1:58:25it up so zooming meaning uh putting the
- 1:58:28largest event here on the scale of the
- 1:58:31full picture you'll again see this uh
- 1:58:34intertwining of large events and small
- 1:58:37events okay so this is exactly the scale
- 1:58:41free uh phenomenon that I was uh telling
- 1:58:45you about and in fact you can really see
- 1:58:48that there's a lot of earthquakes that
- 1:58:50you don't see because if you convert the
- 1:58:53uh energy radiated by the earthquake
- 1:58:56into the magnitude of the earthquake the
- 1:58:59up the cons that people talk about in
- 1:59:02the news when earthquake happens this is
- 1:59:05actually showing you earthquakes between
- 1:59:06seven and eight on the on the Richter
- 1:59:09Scale so a lot of earthquakes below
- 1:59:12seven you don't even see or below six
- 1:59:14even so now if you uh make a histogram
- 1:59:19of the number of earthquakes as a
- 1:59:22function of the magnitude
- 1:59:23which the magnitude being just the log
- 1:59:26of the of the energy then you see uh the
- 1:59:30log of the of the number of observations
- 1:59:33is function at the log of the magnitude
- 1:59:34so this should have a slope one plus mu
- 1:59:37minus one plus mu if it's a parallel
- 1:59:40this is a PDF not a CDF
- 1:59:43and you see that well between 10 to the
- 1:59:47minus 4 and 10 so over five decades at
- 1:59:51least it's pretty nicely uh parallel
- 1:59:54with the distribution of released energy
- 1:59:56that decays as e to the minus five third
- 2:00:00so in my language mu is equal to 2 3
- 2:00:04here okay and so mu equal two third
- 2:00:07remember it's 1 plus mu the power of the
- 2:00:11of the probability distribution of the
- 2:00:13density and so if mu is two third it's
- 2:00:16less than one so formally uh the average
- 2:00:19value of the reduced energy is infinite
- 2:00:22but of course as I said it in the end
- 2:00:26this parallel has to stop somewhere
- 2:00:28because uh otherwise it would mean that
- 2:00:31you have earthquakes uh the
- 2:00:34characteristic size of which is larger
- 2:00:36than the size of the F so we know that
- 2:00:38somewhere maybe somewhere that you we
- 2:00:40don't see the distribution should fall
- 2:00:43off uh more rapidly than a parallel so
- 2:00:46mathematically the the actual uh mean
- 2:00:50value of this distribution will exist
- 2:00:52because of the cutoff but in a in a very
- 2:00:55wide region of observations you don't
- 2:00:58see the cutoff and you see the
- 2:01:01um
- 2:01:02the parallel
- 2:01:05what I'm showing
- 2:01:07um here is uh in a sense power laws in
- 2:01:10the lab so this is called
- 2:01:13um buckhausen noise so the way you get
- 2:01:16back as a noise is you take a magnet
- 2:01:18with impurities and you try to magnetize
- 2:01:22the magnet by putting a an external
- 2:01:24magnetic field and you raise the
- 2:01:27magnetic field slowly and what you see
- 2:01:30is that
- 2:01:31um sometimes so in a magnet there are
- 2:01:33domains and domain walls and the domain
- 2:01:37walls are pinned by impurities and
- 2:01:39prevents the size of the of these
- 2:01:41domains to grow continuously in
- 2:01:44principle because you're driving the
- 2:01:45system with a small continuous increase
- 2:01:49of the magnetic field you should have a
- 2:01:52continuous response a continuous
- 2:01:54increase of magnetization but that's not
- 2:01:56what you see you see that the
- 2:01:57magnetization actually
- 2:01:59is constant for a while and then as a
- 2:02:02domain wall and pins it
- 2:02:05this continuously increases and every
- 2:02:08time it increases the magnet emits the
- 2:02:11sound and so you can actually hear
- 2:02:13magnets magnetizing and this is called
- 2:02:16The Buck has noise so what you see here
- 2:02:18is a recording of every every time
- 2:02:21there's a spike
- 2:02:22um you have
- 2:02:24an increase of magnetization
- 2:02:27and so what you see here what is really
- 2:02:29interesting is that although the
- 2:02:31perturbation is slow and continuous you
- 2:02:34increase slowly the the external field
- 2:02:37the response of the system is
- 2:02:39intermittent
- 2:02:41so either it's zero either it doesn't
- 2:02:43move at all or it moves a lot and so
- 2:02:46this kind of zero one nature of the
- 2:02:49signal this intermittent nature of the
- 2:02:51signal is something that we see in many
- 2:02:53complex systems so that's another
- 2:02:56illustration of a famous physical
- 2:03:00realization of a complex system which is
- 2:03:02turbulent flows and what you see here is
- 2:03:07the local
- 2:03:09um if you want the local
- 2:03:11scale of the Velocity field
- 2:03:14and so in a low turbulence flow
- 2:03:18as a function of time or as a function
- 2:03:20of space it's roughly uniform the the
- 2:03:23flow is uh everywhere you look the
- 2:03:26velocity of the flow is more or less the
- 2:03:28same but in a turbulent flow you have
- 2:03:31this this intermittent Behavior again so
- 2:03:35sometimes the velocity is very low
- 2:03:38sometimes it's high and there are Peaks
- 2:03:40turbulent Peaks like little tornadoes
- 2:03:44that go through the uh the detector here
- 2:03:46that is extremely intermittent
- 2:03:50and you see the same uh in financial
- 2:03:53markets so this intermittency of the
- 2:03:56activity of a tower and flow is
- 2:03:58reflected as an intermittency in the
- 2:04:01What's called the volatility that is the
- 2:04:02propensity to fluctuate of uh financial
- 2:04:06markets so what I'm showing here is uh
- 2:04:09between 1900 and 2000
- 2:04:12uh the absolute value of the daily price
- 2:04:16change of uh so-called Dow Jones index
- 2:04:20which is the index of uh which is an
- 2:04:24average in skipping the details but
- 2:04:27roughly it's an average giving you the
- 2:04:29valuation of the American Stock Market
- 2:04:32and so you see uh again a phenomenology
- 2:04:35that's very close to what I've shown
- 2:04:37before you have huge spikes which
- 2:04:40corresponds to crisis if you want to
- 2:04:42crashes and then periods during which
- 2:04:46the velocities is very low so you see
- 2:04:49this Big Blob here
- 2:04:50this Big Blob is what happened after the
- 2:04:531929 crisis
- 2:04:55uh the 1929 crisis were a huge drop in
- 2:04:58the valuation of the American Stock
- 2:05:01Market but then during 10 years or so
- 2:05:04the activity was very large with many
- 2:05:07moves this scale here is in percent so
- 2:05:10you see the 10 10 means that the stock
- 2:05:12market has gone up or down by 10 and so
- 2:05:15you see that during 10 years there were
- 2:05:17wild uh fluctuations in the stock market
- 2:05:19and then during the 60s nothing much
- 2:05:22happened and then again some uh what
- 2:05:26activity spikes and what's interesting
- 2:05:28is again you have a kind of skill free
- 2:05:30phenomenon in the sense that if you zoom
- 2:05:32on a decade 90 to 2000 or uh on a year
- 2:05:37or on a month or even on a day you see
- 2:05:41that the volatility of the market is
- 2:05:43fluctuating In This Very intermittent
- 2:05:45way with the region of excitations
- 2:05:48intertwined with regions of com so it's
- 2:05:52exactly the same as in a turbulent flow
- 2:05:54and you can actually push this analogy
- 2:05:57further
- 2:05:58so in the left curve here you see the
- 2:06:03distribution of the change of velocity
- 2:06:09between two points
- 2:06:11okay so if you measure the velocity on
- 2:06:13one point in the flow and the velocity
- 2:06:15uh then the velocity on in on another
- 2:06:19point of the flow
- 2:06:21these are usually different
- 2:06:22and if you make the difference then make
- 2:06:24the histogram of this difference you
- 2:06:26find the this family of curve and what
- 2:06:29distinguishes these different curves is
- 2:06:31the scale at which you measure the
- 2:06:33difference that is if you measure two
- 2:06:35close by points or if you measure two
- 2:06:38points that are far away and what you
- 2:06:40see is that if you measure between two
- 2:06:43points that are close by
- 2:06:45you see a histogram that has a fat tails
- 2:06:49so let me explain why I see we speak of
- 2:06:52fat tails because here on the x-axis is
- 2:06:56the velocity the velocity difference and
- 2:06:58on the y-axis is the log of the
- 2:07:00probability
- 2:07:01so remember the gaussian the gaussian is
- 2:07:03exponential of minus x squared so if you
- 2:07:05take the log you have an inverted
- 2:07:07Parabola so that's what you see here for
- 2:07:11difference of velocities on large scales
- 2:07:14is pretty much a gaussian but then as
- 2:07:17you zoom in in a sense you see a
- 2:07:19distribution that becomes fatter and
- 2:07:21fatter okay and what's interesting in
- 2:07:25terms of phenomenology is that if you do
- 2:07:27the the same experiment
- 2:07:28for the price difference of the S P 500
- 2:07:33here it's not the Dow Jones but it's
- 2:07:35another index then you find that if you
- 2:07:38measure the difference of prices on
- 2:07:41relatively long time scales it's it's
- 2:07:43close to a gaussian but as you move to
- 2:07:45higher and higher frequency and here for
- 2:07:47example on The Daily time scale you find
- 2:07:50a much fatter distributions that
- 2:07:53resemble what you are seeing in the
- 2:07:56turbulent flow so I'll go back to that
- 2:07:58in more details
- 2:08:00so let me speak about now uh other
- 2:08:03famous parallel distributions I spoke
- 2:08:05about the earthquakes but
- 2:08:10the most ancient one maybe is um is the
- 2:08:13one of taito that I told you about
- 2:08:16so this is a zip plot
- 2:08:18of
- 2:08:19um wealth with the wealth distribution
- 2:08:23I think it was in 2005. and uh in here
- 2:08:28it has changed since and this was Bill
- 2:08:30Gates and this is Warren Buffett and so
- 2:08:33on and so you see that the zip plot give
- 2:08:37you something that's relatively straight
- 2:08:39on actually several decades with an
- 2:08:42exponent view which is around 1.5
- 2:08:46okay so 1.5 is greater than 1 so it
- 2:08:49means that the average wealth formally
- 2:08:51exists but its variance is infinite
- 2:08:55and what's uh striking about this
- 2:08:59observation is that it was already made
- 2:09:02um in the in the late
- 2:09:04um 19th century by uh Wilfredo Pareto an
- 2:09:09Italian economist who actually here is
- 2:09:12some of this data we collected on income
- 2:09:16in Great Britain in Ireland again this
- 2:09:20is a cumulative distribution now not as
- 2:09:22if thought but as I've told you it's the
- 2:09:24same content and you see very nice
- 2:09:27straight lines
- 2:09:29um and what title realize is that uh the
- 2:09:33the these parallels are Universal
- 2:09:36independent of the country he was
- 2:09:38looking at and with exponents that are
- 2:09:41relatively close to one another and so
- 2:09:45he was mentioning this in his uh in his
- 2:09:47book
- 2:09:48speaking about these empirical results
- 2:09:51these results are most remarkable it's
- 2:09:53absolutely impossible to admit that
- 2:09:54there are only a result of chance there
- 2:09:57must be without doubt the cause which
- 2:09:59produces the tendency for incomes to lie
- 2:10:02according a sudden curve the shape of
- 2:10:04this curve seems to depend to a very
- 2:10:06small extent on the different economic
- 2:10:08situations of the countries under
- 2:10:09consideration because the results are
- 2:10:12more or less the same in those countries
- 2:10:14whose economy conditions are varied as
- 2:10:16those of England Germany Italian towns
- 2:10:19and even Peru so you see it's quite
- 2:10:23remarkable because already at this time
- 2:10:271896 Tito had observed something very
- 2:10:31counter-intuitive in a sense that is
- 2:10:33this uh extremely broad distribution of
- 2:10:36wealth and income
- 2:10:37that doesn't come naturally from simple
- 2:10:40economic models and he was also struck
- 2:10:43by the universality of the results and
- 2:10:45he was looking for something that
- 2:10:47physicists are fond of which is to find
- 2:10:50a common cause to
- 2:10:52apparently different types of phenomena
- 2:10:56or observations
- 2:11:00so just one point about the universality
- 2:11:03of this exponent 1.5 and we'll go back
- 2:11:06to that when I tell you about a simple
- 2:11:09model that generates these parallels is
- 2:11:11that it's not exactly true that they are
- 2:11:14constants across countries or across
- 2:11:16time and here what you see is something
- 2:11:20that you've probably heard a lot in
- 2:11:23otherwise you live on in a different
- 2:11:25planet is the fact that the wealth
- 2:11:28inequalities in the US has evolved quite
- 2:11:31uh
- 2:11:33significantly significantly over the
- 2:11:36last century so that's the whole work of
- 2:11:40pkt and others and so here
- 2:11:44um well don't look at the upper graph if
- 2:11:46you want but from the data you can infer
- 2:11:49a value of this exponent new and you see
- 2:11:53that it's a
- 2:11:55It's relatively low around 1.5
- 2:11:59around the 1920s that it increases and
- 2:12:03remember increasing mu means that the
- 2:12:05distribution falls off faster so there's
- 2:12:08less inequalities when mu increases it
- 2:12:11reaches around two around 1980 and the
- 2:12:16start of the Dragon years and then it
- 2:12:18goes back down again to Levels Close to
- 2:12:21the 20s so this is really what people
- 2:12:24have in mind when they speak about the
- 2:12:27increase of inequalities in the US and
- 2:12:30in in the world more generally
- 2:12:33yes okay other uh famous parallel
- 2:12:38distributions which are quite remarkable
- 2:12:41one is
- 2:12:42the distribution of City sizes
- 2:12:45so
- 2:12:47um here you look at the different cities
- 2:12:51in the country or or in the world and
- 2:12:55you rank them according to their size
- 2:12:57and then you do either a rank plots a
- 2:13:00zip plots or a
- 2:13:03CDF as I was explaining but it's the
- 2:13:05same result it's even more the same
- 2:13:06result because in this case you find mu
- 2:13:08equal one so if you remember one of the
- 2:13:11slope the slope of the CDF
- 2:13:12representation is one is minus mu and
- 2:13:15the slope of the
- 2:13:17zip representation is one minus one one
- 2:13:20over mu but if mu is one of course the
- 2:13:22two are the same so the value of mu
- 2:13:25equal one is special and it's called
- 2:13:27actually a zip flow or a reason I'm
- 2:13:30going to say in a second and what you
- 2:13:32see is that again a very nice parallel
- 2:13:35distribution for City sizes
- 2:13:38and if you do the same
- 2:13:41exercise for Farm sizes in the US you
- 2:13:45find and look here it's really
- 2:13:46impressive because you go from sums of
- 2:13:49size 10 so 10 people working in the farm
- 2:13:52around here to Farms like Walmart where
- 2:13:56there's a million employees so there are
- 2:13:59five decades here
- 2:14:00over which the distribution appears to
- 2:14:04be close to perfect
- 2:14:07Ziploc that is a parallel with mule one
- 2:14:10okay so it means that you know in in
- 2:14:14layman terms it means that earthquakes
- 2:14:17are extremely heterogeneous
- 2:14:19City sizes are extremely heterogeneous
- 2:14:21firm sizes are extremely heterogeneous
- 2:14:23and wealth distributions are extremely
- 2:14:25attributions and why is that important
- 2:14:27is because if you try to represent the
- 2:14:30whole population of firms or of
- 2:14:33individuals by an average representative
- 2:14:37guy or an average representative firm
- 2:14:40then you know it's it's not clear at all
- 2:14:43that you're not throwing the baby with
- 2:14:46bath water by neglecting this huge uh
- 2:14:49variety of farms and the huge variety of
- 2:14:52wealth and so including these
- 2:14:56fluctuations these extreme fluctuations
- 2:14:57in economic models is something that
- 2:15:00people are trying to do right now and
- 2:15:03clearly from the data it's it's really
- 2:15:06important again vehicle one corresponds
- 2:15:08to the point where
- 2:15:10the uh the average of the distribution
- 2:15:12barely exists it's just the point where
- 2:15:15it's mathematically starts diverging and
- 2:15:18so if you have a an infinite
- 2:15:21average firm size how can you represent
- 2:15:24the whole economy as a single
- 2:15:27representative um this doesn't look
- 2:15:29right
- 2:15:30and of course it is problematic
- 2:15:34so zif as I told you zip played the
- 2:15:37exercise of um
- 2:15:39of of of making histograms of um
- 2:15:44uh the frequency of a word as a function
- 2:15:47of its rank
- 2:15:48so the number of times the word appears
- 2:15:50in the text is a function of uh of the
- 2:15:53small n that I
- 2:15:55um
- 2:15:56introduced uh in the on the on the board
- 2:15:59the the rank of the of the word and so
- 2:16:02here is what V which not surprisingly is
- 2:16:06the most common one and then you have
- 2:16:07this beautiful parallel uh for the
- 2:16:10distribution of of word frequency and
- 2:16:13again you see that this is relatively
- 2:16:15independent of the language in which the
- 2:16:19text is written so Spanish and French
- 2:16:23and they all show this very uh broad
- 2:16:27distribution scale free distribution of
- 2:16:29uh of word frequencies
- 2:16:32and it's close to Miracle 1 so that's
- 2:16:36what zip had noticed and so the miracle
- 2:16:40one case is now called the zip
- 2:16:42distribution
- 2:16:45so again interesting to think of models
- 2:16:48that could explain why these parallels
- 2:16:51appear and we'll speak about that later
- 2:16:53there's another empirical data that I
- 2:16:56won't show because it's uh it's
- 2:16:58interesting and at the same time a
- 2:17:01little depressing this is the analog of
- 2:17:04the zip plot for
- 2:17:08um the number of citations that are
- 2:17:10sudden
- 2:17:12uh paper has
- 2:17:14so actually this is a cumulative
- 2:17:16distribution I think
- 2:17:20no no it's this is a ZIP file anyway so
- 2:17:24what you see is that again there's a
- 2:17:26parallel tail with now an exponent view
- 2:17:29which is equal to two and uh what
- 2:17:33happens now is is that there are papers
- 2:17:35that are extremely well cited because
- 2:17:37they launched a new field or they made a
- 2:17:40tremendous amount of progress
- 2:17:43uh but but this Palo also means that the
- 2:17:46most probable is that papers have
- 2:17:49received very few citations and if you
- 2:17:51look indeed that the most probable value
- 2:17:53of the number of citations is is around
- 2:17:56one or two which means that most papers
- 2:17:59are never cited except by the author uh
- 2:18:02himself or herself so uh this is a kind
- 2:18:05of again the um strange phenomenon where
- 2:18:09either the paper is hardly noticed and
- 2:18:12you've worked for yourself essentially
- 2:18:14or the paper has a great success and
- 2:18:18receives many citations
- 2:18:20again we expect that uh very far out in
- 2:18:23detail you there should be something
- 2:18:25else happening because if you think for
- 2:18:27example of uh Einstein 1905 papers they
- 2:18:31are not cited anymore they're excited as
- 2:18:33books or or textbooks and so here we see
- 2:18:38another reason why a number of citations
- 2:18:41might be a parallel in some region but
- 2:18:43then we expect that Beyond some number
- 2:18:47uh citations become of a different
- 2:18:49nature
- 2:18:51so here is a big list of
- 2:18:54of examples where you you see parallels
- 2:18:57and the corresponding
- 2:18:58um
- 2:18:59uh value of mu so earthquakes I've
- 2:19:02mentioned already I said Five Thirds so
- 2:19:05mu is around 2 3.7 uh industrial
- 2:19:08disasters the amount insurances have to
- 2:19:11pay after uh
- 2:19:13whatever fire in in
- 2:19:19in a
- 2:19:21ffecting the industrial sites or things
- 2:19:25like that and here you find a very broad
- 2:19:27again parallel muco one uh books books
- 2:19:31are a little bit like citations some
- 2:19:33some books uh
- 2:19:36are sold to incredible numbers and
- 2:19:39others are only bought by by a few
- 2:19:41friends of the author you equal 0.5 2.5
- 2:19:44the box office or the the amount of uh
- 2:19:48of people buying tickets to go see a
- 2:19:51movie and this is 1.6 if you look at the
- 2:19:55worldwide uh White
- 2:19:58web
- 2:20:00it's um it's the network
- 2:20:04um and I'll show data of that later on I
- 2:20:06mean I'll show pictures of that it's
- 2:20:09also some nodes are extremely connected
- 2:20:11and have a lot of neighbors and other
- 2:20:14nodes are very weakly connected
- 2:20:16so a very broad variety of examples
- 2:20:18where these parallels appear and we need
- 2:20:21to understand where they come from what
- 2:20:23are they what are they telling us what
- 2:20:25is the the idea of scale-free phenomena
- 2:20:28indicating on the nature of the
- 2:20:31underlying mechanism
- 2:20:33here I'm showing a little bit the analog
- 2:20:35of
- 2:20:37of
- 2:20:38dark housing noise when you take a piece
- 2:20:41of material and you try to break it
- 2:20:43before it actually breaks it's going to
- 2:20:46make some noise and so if you again look
- 2:20:49at the energy the acoustic energy that's
- 2:20:54released by the micro crack growing you
- 2:20:57see a very beautiful parallel so here in
- 2:21:00a sense this is really an earthquake in
- 2:21:02the lab with the same phenomenology
- 2:21:06foreign
- 2:21:09this is stock markets now
- 2:21:12so this is the cumulative distribution
- 2:21:15of uh price changes from one day to the
- 2:21:19next
- 2:21:20and you see a quite beautiful straight
- 2:21:23line which in a log log representation
- 2:21:26again
- 2:21:27indicates uh parallel with exponent mu
- 2:21:30around three
- 2:21:32and what I'm showing here is that this
- 2:21:36exponent 3 seems to be extremely
- 2:21:38Universal it doesn't seem to depend much
- 2:21:40on what kind of financial object you're
- 2:21:43looking at so so this is a student
- 2:21:45distribution with mu equal three fitting
- 2:21:48the returns of the daily returns of the
- 2:21:53s p index
- 2:21:55this is another object that I don't even
- 2:21:58want to Define here showing the same
- 2:22:00parallel Tails this is a superposition
- 2:22:02of the PDF a very different Financial
- 2:22:05objects that all show this inverse cubic
- 2:22:08law as it's called that is the one of
- 2:22:11Rex Cube
- 2:22:12distribution
- 2:22:14Decay for the cumulative distribution
- 2:22:18and this is
- 2:22:20um
- 2:22:21uh
- 2:22:22plot showing the value of this exponent
- 2:22:25mu across many different Financial
- 2:22:27contracts so here you would find uh corn
- 2:22:31for example so it has an exponent
- 2:22:34slightly larger than three
- 2:22:37um
- 2:22:39wheat the SPX that um
- 2:22:43US Stock Market
- 2:22:45all sorts of other things gold and so
- 2:22:49you see that
- 2:22:50um well maybe there are a few outliers
- 2:22:53like Swiss franc here
- 2:22:55or all the Euros which seem to have a
- 2:22:58slightly higher values of you but
- 2:23:01overall we would be tempted to say the
- 2:23:05same thing as Ito said why is there such
- 2:23:08a degree of universality between all
- 2:23:10these observations all these
- 2:23:12observations seem to be compatible with
- 2:23:14a parallel and the value of mu is uh
- 2:23:18pretty uh much the same for all kinds of
- 2:23:22financial instruments except maybe
- 2:23:24foreign exchange where you see that
- 2:23:26maybe in the case when you exchange
- 2:23:29something else happens
- 2:23:31and one of the hints that something
- 2:23:33interesting takes place is that now if
- 2:23:36you look at
- 2:23:37so the parallel tail means that there
- 2:23:39are extreme events and if you look at
- 2:23:42what happened that can explain
- 2:23:45uh the the strength of this event why
- 2:23:48why is why was there such a big jump
- 2:23:50happening that day and what the surprise
- 2:23:54is that actually many of these jumps
- 2:23:56seem to come out of nowhere they don't
- 2:23:59seem to be related to anything that
- 2:24:01actually happened in the world that they
- 2:24:02or that particular minute
- 2:24:04uh and and so it it suggests that the
- 2:24:09key to understand these this
- 2:24:11universality
- 2:24:12is of endogenous nature it's the
- 2:24:15nonlinear feedback of the market on
- 2:24:18itself that maybe explains why the
- 2:24:21emerging phenomenon which is the this
- 2:24:23probability distribution which has a
- 2:24:25parallel tail is is due to a kind of uh
- 2:24:29self-exciting feedback of the market on
- 2:24:31itself and not the nature of the news
- 2:24:34that hit the market this is not to say
- 2:24:36that when there's a big news nothing
- 2:24:38happens but most of the time the market
- 2:24:41jumps and nothing has happened and so
- 2:24:44this is uh this is really a puzzle that
- 2:24:47one needs to understand and it's related
- 2:24:49to what I told you at the very beginning
- 2:24:51one of the most well-known uh anomaly
- 2:24:54compared to the standard economic theory
- 2:24:58is the so-called excess velocity of
- 2:25:00financial prices which as I've already
- 2:25:02said uh stock prices move by something
- 2:25:05like two percent up or down every day
- 2:25:07and this doesn't seem reasonable I mean
- 2:25:10it doesn't seem reasonable that the
- 2:25:12actual value of a company changes from
- 2:25:15one day to the next by such a big amount
- 2:25:18and you translate it in terms of say if
- 2:25:22you think of uh I don't know apple or
- 2:25:24Tesla uh if you convert the two percent
- 2:25:27in dollars these are enormous amounts
- 2:25:30and it's very hard to understand why
- 2:25:32this should be the case
- 2:25:35okay there are many more unexplained
- 2:25:38um
- 2:25:39uh observable
- 2:25:42um
- 2:25:43Hollow of observations in economics of
- 2:25:46Finance I will not uh show all of them
- 2:25:49but I want to show one that I find quite
- 2:25:52interesting
- 2:25:54which is uh the way the fluctuations
- 2:25:57regress as a function of the size of the
- 2:26:00of the firm or of an economy
- 2:26:04so here what I'm showing is
- 2:26:07the standard deviation of the GDP growth
- 2:26:11or of the value of the sales growth or a
- 2:26:15company
- 2:26:16um so these quantities fluctuate from
- 2:26:19one year to the next and you can look at
- 2:26:23at the fluctuations of these quantities
- 2:26:25so sometimes if a company a firm makes a
- 2:26:29good year and so its sales increases and
- 2:26:32then next year it's a bad year it
- 2:26:34decreases
- 2:26:35same for countries
- 2:26:37sometimes the economy is growing so the
- 2:26:39GDP increases and sometimes you have a
- 2:26:42recession and the GDP decreases so you
- 2:26:44can look at at the variation of sales or
- 2:26:48GDP from one year to the next
- 2:26:52this will give you random variables
- 2:26:54and these random variables have some
- 2:26:56mean which is the mean growth of a thumb
- 2:27:01or the mean growth of the economy and
- 2:27:03they also have fluctuations
- 2:27:04and so what I'm plotting here oops
- 2:27:11is
- 2:27:12um
- 2:27:12the way
- 2:27:14the uh
- 2:27:17Sigma that is either square root or
- 2:27:19would mean square of the fluctuations of
- 2:27:21the growth either of sales or GDP
- 2:27:26um depends on the size of the company or
- 2:27:29the size of the country you're looking
- 2:27:31at
- 2:27:32and what You observe and again it's an
- 2:27:35observation that's remarkable because it
- 2:27:37covers many decades from
- 2:27:40uh sales corresponding to a hundred
- 2:27:43dollars to 10 to the 12 dollars for
- 2:27:46countries you find that this regression
- 2:27:49is fairly well described by a parallel
- 2:27:51with an exponent which is very small
- 2:27:530.15
- 2:27:55and what's also remarkable is that
- 2:27:58you know the firms seem to be a
- 2:28:01continuation of the countries or vice
- 2:28:03versa the country seem to be
- 2:28:05in a sense super firms
- 2:28:08um that continue the trend that you see
- 2:28:10at the level of thumbs and actually we
- 2:28:12know that some Farms are so big that
- 2:28:16they have a sales that correspond to the
- 2:28:20GDP of small countries so it's not
- 2:28:22completely absurd to
- 2:28:24um to think that there's a continuity
- 2:28:27between the two problems but actually
- 2:28:29here you see that indeed the trend is is
- 2:28:32continued from firms to
- 2:28:34to countries maybe for very small firms
- 2:28:36there's something else happening but as
- 2:28:39soon as the firm becomes substantial
- 2:28:41then there is this uh slow Decay and so
- 2:28:45this observation dates back from the mid
- 2:28:4790s
- 2:28:48and it doesn't yet have a completely
- 2:28:53convincing explanation and what you
- 2:28:56should remember from this graph is that
- 2:28:59initially people thought that the Decay
- 2:29:01would be as one over square root of s
- 2:29:04and the one over square root of s is a
- 2:29:06is a very simple
- 2:29:08Central limit type theorem uh that I'm
- 2:29:11going to speak about now but essentially
- 2:29:14if you think of a big farm as a
- 2:29:15superposition of smaller company a
- 2:29:18smaller departments then each of them
- 2:29:22fluctuates maybe independently and the
- 2:29:25aggregation of independent objects often
- 2:29:27leads to a one over square root of n
- 2:29:30decrease of fluctuations and we'll see
- 2:29:33that in the context of the central limit
- 2:29:35theorem and the same for countries you
- 2:29:37can think of countries as the
- 2:29:38superpositions of many different farms
- 2:29:40and so the GDP of countries should kind
- 2:29:43of average out the fluctuations of each
- 2:29:45of them and lead to a standard deviation
- 2:29:48that decays as one over square root of
- 2:29:50uh of s but it doesn't it decays much
- 2:29:53slower so it means that big countries
- 2:29:55actually have a GDP that fluctuates much
- 2:29:58too much compared to this naive
- 2:30:00diversification argument if you want
- 2:30:03and so this is the analog of what I said
- 2:30:06in the context of financial markets
- 2:30:08there's an excess volatility of
- 2:30:10financial markets but there's also an
- 2:30:11excess of GDP volatility that's related
- 2:30:14to the difference between 0.15 here
- 2:30:17which decays much slower than one over
- 2:30:20square root of s and leads to very large
- 2:30:23countries still having a substantial uh
- 2:30:27business Cycles that's that's the name
- 2:30:30that economists give to GP fluctuations
- 2:30:33they call it business cycles and this is
- 2:30:36called in the literature the small shop
- 2:30:37large business cycle puzzle because many
- 2:30:39of these recessions or many of these
- 2:30:42increase of GDP are not due to a
- 2:30:46particular shock that one can identify
- 2:30:49exactly the same as financial markets
- 2:30:51seem to fluctuate without external news
- 2:30:55GDP seems to seem to fluctuate uh
- 2:31:00of course not always and we are we
- 2:31:02already mentioned this the covid crisis
- 2:31:04is clearly not an endogenous crisis it's
- 2:31:07it's imposed by an external shock which
- 2:31:10is a virus but in many cases the GDP of
- 2:31:14the country fluctuates and we don't
- 2:31:16really know why so uh that's that's
- 2:31:18called the small shock large business
- 2:31:20cycle puzzle because maybe there are
- 2:31:21small shocks that we don't see but they
- 2:31:24lead to an anomalously large fluctuation
- 2:31:27of the gep
- 2:31:28Okay so
- 2:31:30at this stage I'm going to again switch
- 2:31:33to The Bold and continue with
- 2:31:38the theory
- 2:31:40or
- 2:31:42analytic analytical tools to describe
- 2:31:46what's going on
- 2:31:48so we'll probably be here around until
- 2:31:5012 15 if it's okay for you
- 2:31:55okay
- 2:32:02all right
- 2:32:05foreign
- 2:32:10so you see quite a number of interesting
- 2:32:12empirical phenomena that for many of
- 2:32:15them don't yet have a plausible
- 2:32:17explanation or convincing explanation or
- 2:32:20at least an explanation that people
- 2:32:22agree on
- 2:32:23so a lot of things to remain to be done
- 2:32:32so this was you know in my outline I
- 2:32:35spoke about two types of distribution in
- 2:32:38one many examples is the thing that I've
- 2:32:41shown on my screen and now we move to
- 2:32:44three generalized Central limit theorems
- 2:32:50and probably will speak about four next
- 2:32:53week
- 2:33:10okay
- 2:33:12three clts
- 2:33:16okay so remember I have my set of random
- 2:33:19variables X1 x n
- 2:33:22and this is drawn According to some
- 2:33:25density row of x
- 2:33:29and now something standard that you can
- 2:33:31be interested in
- 2:33:33is uh what happens to the sum of these
- 2:33:37random variables
- 2:33:40on from I equal one to n
- 2:33:42of x i
- 2:33:45and the central limit theorem tries to
- 2:33:48tell you something about the statistics
- 2:33:49of this sum provided uh two assumptions
- 2:33:53are met which were implicit in what I
- 2:33:56was saying from the beginning I failed
- 2:33:59to mention it but nobody screams so I
- 2:34:01guess that everybody implicitly
- 2:34:03understood what I meant here all these
- 2:34:05X's are identically distributed
- 2:34:08according to the same row of X but of
- 2:34:10course I failed to mention that they're
- 2:34:12also independent so you're drawing them
- 2:34:15independently from each other according
- 2:34:17to the same distribution row of X so
- 2:34:19this is these are the standard
- 2:34:21assumptions of the central limit theorem
- 2:34:23although I'll mention a little later
- 2:34:25that these these assumptions can be uh
- 2:34:30extended and and
- 2:34:33weakened uh tremendously without
- 2:34:36changing the final result but let me
- 2:34:39insist on the standard setting of the
- 2:34:41central limit theorem which is the
- 2:34:43so-called IID
- 2:34:46setting
- 2:34:49so ID means independent and identically
- 2:34:52distributed
- 2:34:54According to some row of X okay
- 2:34:58and so I'm interested here in the sum
- 2:35:01and you can think of many reasons for
- 2:35:04being interested in in the sum so for
- 2:35:07example uh the GDP of a country is the
- 2:35:11sum of the Productions of many different
- 2:35:14Farms the total price change of a stock
- 2:35:19between now and a year from now is going
- 2:35:22to be the sum of the daily price changes
- 2:35:25and so on and so forth
- 2:35:28okay so what can we say about SM
- 2:35:31well the central limit theorem you all
- 2:35:35of you know about it and I'm going to
- 2:35:37not not derive it and prove it but I'm
- 2:35:42going to tell you what it means and
- 2:35:44especially what it doesn't mean
- 2:35:47so I'm going to assume that
- 2:35:50um
- 2:35:51mu is greater than two
- 2:35:54which is a way to ensure that whatever
- 2:35:57the tail of the distribution
- 2:35:59uh
- 2:36:02the first moment
- 2:36:04is finite
- 2:36:06and the second moment or the variance
- 2:36:08which is M2 minus M1 squared is also
- 2:36:13finite
- 2:36:15okay
- 2:36:17so I don't need it to be a parallel I'm
- 2:36:19just using mu greater than 2 as a kind
- 2:36:21of shorthand to say these two moments
- 2:36:25are are finite
- 2:36:27but again the distribution of X doesn't
- 2:36:29need to be
- 2:36:31of a parallel type it can Decay the way
- 2:36:34it wants I just want these two moments
- 2:36:36to be finite okay
- 2:36:38and then the theorem tells you uh the
- 2:36:42following it tells you that
- 2:36:45um if I look at SN minus
- 2:36:49M times n
- 2:36:51divided by
- 2:36:54Sigma square root of M
- 2:36:57okay
- 2:36:58so if I shift
- 2:37:00s n by its mean
- 2:37:03and we scale it by the correct quantity
- 2:37:05which in this case happens to be 1 over
- 2:37:08square square root of M so uh we'll see
- 2:37:11in a second what it means then the
- 2:37:13probability that
- 2:37:17this shifted and rescaled object is
- 2:37:21between two fixed numbers A and B
- 2:37:25so the probability for this
- 2:37:29to be between a and b or any A and B
- 2:37:32finite this tends for n goes to Infinity
- 2:37:36to uh
- 2:37:38integral from A to B
- 2:37:41of TX over square root of 2 pi
- 2:37:45exponential of minus x squared over two
- 2:37:49okay so this is a
- 2:37:51a rigorous way to State what the theorem
- 2:37:53means it means that
- 2:37:55for fixed A and B that you've chosen at
- 2:37:59the beginning and you won't let them
- 2:38:01evolve with n that's the important point
- 2:38:03that A and B are independent of n then
- 2:38:05by shifting and rescaling SN
- 2:38:08you find a universal distribution for
- 2:38:11this quantity which happens to be a
- 2:38:13gaussian
- 2:38:14and when n goes to Infinity that's the
- 2:38:16only thing that can happen okay
- 2:38:19so what is remarkable in a sense is is
- 2:38:22the universality of this result
- 2:38:28it's the maybe the simplest example of
- 2:38:31universality it's whatever row of X you
- 2:38:34started with
- 2:38:36I don't have to even say what it is I
- 2:38:39just need these two moments to be finite
- 2:38:41and boom I have this Central limit
- 2:38:45theorem that holds and that tells me
- 2:38:47that in the end I'm I'm
- 2:38:50I'm ending up with a gaussian
- 2:38:52distribution for this variable
- 2:38:54okay so that's the formal uh statement
- 2:38:57of the theorem but let's see a little
- 2:39:00more in details what it means and what
- 2:39:01it doesn't mean before uh you know
- 2:39:04running to conclusions that may be
- 2:39:06unwarranted and even dangerous in some
- 2:39:08cases
- 2:39:11so what it means is that if I'm plotting
- 2:39:13the distribution of s n
- 2:39:15as a function
- 2:39:17of of
- 2:39:19of SM for n finite but large
- 2:39:24okay so imagine that I'm drawing a
- 2:39:28million of these variables and summing
- 2:39:30them
- 2:39:31sorry I expect yes being out of our
- 2:39:34scope oh sorry sorry
- 2:39:36yes
- 2:39:39sorry
- 2:39:45it's a very difficult exercise to speak
- 2:39:47without even knowing whether you are you
- 2:39:50know you follow whether you're
- 2:39:51interested whether whatever so
- 2:39:54bear with me I really the first time I'm
- 2:39:57doing this and I I don't find it's very
- 2:40:00comfortable anyway so uh okay I should
- 2:40:03check all the time on my screen
- 2:40:07yeah maybe I can actually actually for
- 2:40:10some reason I'm biased and I never write
- 2:40:13the left and I write more to the right I
- 2:40:15don't know if it means anything but uh
- 2:40:17so let me
- 2:40:19buys my screen the other way around
- 2:40:24okay
- 2:40:25foreign
- 2:40:34Okay so
- 2:40:35so what this theorem tells me is that
- 2:40:37well
- 2:40:39suddenly something uh
- 2:40:41happens around the mean MN which I am
- 2:40:45taking as the origin here I'm centering
- 2:40:47around MN
- 2:40:49and then there's a region
- 2:40:53where the distribution is gaussian and
- 2:40:56this region
- 2:40:59is at least
- 2:41:01Sigma square root of n
- 2:41:04and so that's what it looks like in the
- 2:41:06central region
- 2:41:09but then
- 2:41:10what happens is that there is a
- 2:41:13crossover
- 2:41:15which I'm going to call Delta
- 2:41:19star
- 2:41:23which depends on n and actually might
- 2:41:27not be even
- 2:41:28exactly the same to the left and to the
- 2:41:30right that belong Beyond which the
- 2:41:34distribution is not gaussian anymore
- 2:41:39and I'll give you explicit examples of
- 2:41:42cases where one can compute what happens
- 2:41:44in these Tails regions
- 2:41:45so
- 2:41:47so that's the tail region
- 2:41:52and in in details it's not gaussian
- 2:41:55actually
- 2:41:57and it can be anything
- 2:41:58and so the the kind of uh paradox
- 2:42:02that
- 2:42:04is implicit in the central limit theorem
- 2:42:06and for those of you like statistical
- 2:42:08mechanics it's very much related to what
- 2:42:10I was saying earlier about the Paradox
- 2:42:13of irreversibility is that for any
- 2:42:16finite n mathematically there's as much
- 2:42:20information in P of SM than there is in
- 2:42:24row of X which means that for any finite
- 2:42:26n
- 2:42:27you can in principle reconstruct exactly
- 2:42:30rho of X starting from P of s okay
- 2:42:35so it seems contradictory right because
- 2:42:37I'm saying at the same time that for n
- 2:42:39going to Infinity the P of s is gaussian
- 2:42:42and Universal
- 2:42:43but at the same time there's exactly the
- 2:42:46same amount of information in row of X
- 2:42:48and in P of s
- 2:42:49and the Paradox is that this information
- 2:42:51specific tour of X it disappears in the
- 2:42:55tails
- 2:42:56it's more and more lost
- 2:42:58in these regions that have a probability
- 2:43:02to be observed that is less and less and
- 2:43:05so that's where you you hide the the
- 2:43:09specificity of the problem that you're
- 2:43:10looking at it's in the tails
- 2:43:13so what is Delta of n well it depends on
- 2:43:16the problem
- 2:43:18Delta star of n
- 2:43:21this is not Universal
- 2:43:30and so I'm going to give you a few
- 2:43:32examples of of what Delta of n looks
- 2:43:37like
- 2:43:37uh but what I'm saying here which is
- 2:43:40really important is that the tail region
- 2:43:43is not Universal and the position of
- 2:43:46this Crossover at Delta star from uh at
- 2:43:49which you cross over from the gaussian
- 2:43:52to a tail and of course this is blurry
- 2:43:54that's why I put a wiggly line here it's
- 2:43:57not a strict value
- 2:43:59Beyond which you're not gaussian and
- 2:44:02before which you are gaussian it's it's
- 2:44:05something that slowly makes you depart
- 2:44:08from gaussian and becomes appreciable uh
- 2:44:12Beyond Delta star okay but it's an
- 2:44:14important order of magnitude to keep in
- 2:44:16mind to know whether
- 2:44:18the phenomenon you you want to describe
- 2:44:21is in the gaussian region or in the tail
- 2:44:25region where you cannot use the gaussian
- 2:44:28central limit theorem and therefore you
- 2:44:29cannot say anything except if you have
- 2:44:32information on row of X okay
- 2:44:34so the reason it's important is that
- 2:44:37again many people use a central limit
- 2:44:40theorem
- 2:44:41forgetting that in central limit there
- 2:44:43is Central the Sea of of
- 2:44:46CLT is Central
- 2:44:50and again it means that
- 2:44:53it only tells you something in the bulk
- 2:44:55of the distribution and not in details
- 2:44:57so imagine that you're a I don't know a
- 2:44:59portfolio manager and you want to
- 2:45:02understand the extreme risks of your
- 2:45:04portfolio
- 2:45:05you might say well I have a lot of
- 2:45:08Assets in my portfolio a lot of
- 2:45:10different financial instruments so maybe
- 2:45:12I can use the central limit theorem and
- 2:45:15maybe my risk is very small and my risk
- 2:45:18in detail is very small because uh
- 2:45:20because of the gaussian decaying very
- 2:45:22fast but of course this is crazy this is
- 2:45:24crazy because of many reasons but one of
- 2:45:27the basic reasons is that
- 2:45:30the number of objects that you have in
- 2:45:32your portfolio is never very very large
- 2:45:34and even if it was large there would be
- 2:45:37a threshold Beyond which you wouldn't be
- 2:45:40able to say anything about the tail
- 2:45:42event so you know invoking the central
- 2:45:46limit theorem to control 10 events is is
- 2:45:48just completely meaningless
- 2:45:51anyway so let me give you uh two
- 2:45:54examples
- 2:45:56one example is the case where rho of x
- 2:46:01equals rho of minus X
- 2:46:04so symmetric distribution
- 2:46:07which uh in this case
- 2:46:11is such that m equals zero of course but
- 2:46:13that's not the most important aspect and
- 2:46:17also
- 2:46:18uh M4 is finite
- 2:46:23okay so if you want mu is greater than
- 2:46:274.
- 2:46:29no no sorry I'm saying saying something
- 2:46:32wrong here
- 2:46:34sorry get that there's something wrong
- 2:46:37you should look at my notes
- 2:46:40MN are all finite that's that's very
- 2:46:44important so my next example is going to
- 2:46:46be uh when what happens if some of the
- 2:46:49moments are not finite okay so I'm
- 2:46:51really looking at uh a distribution with
- 2:46:55fin tails that is symmetric okay so it
- 2:46:58has thin tails in the sense that all its
- 2:47:00moments are finite
- 2:47:02and then in this case what you actually
- 2:47:04can show is that Delta star of n grows
- 2:47:09like n to the three fourth
- 2:47:14okay and so this is not too bad because
- 2:47:18it tells you that
- 2:47:19you have a gaussian of width
- 2:47:22Sigma square root of n
- 2:47:25but the width over which this gaussian
- 2:47:28approximation holds is much larger than
- 2:47:31square root of n it's n to the three
- 2:47:33fourth
- 2:47:34and so um the probability to be in the
- 2:47:37Tails is is quite small because the
- 2:47:41probability to be in the Tails would be
- 2:47:43exponential of minus Delta star squared
- 2:47:46over
- 2:47:48Sigma squared n
- 2:47:52so it's exponential of minus uh
- 2:47:56n square root of n
- 2:47:58okay
- 2:48:00so the probability to be in this region
- 2:48:03decays quite rapidly with n
- 2:48:06uh as exponential not of minus n but of
- 2:48:10minus square root of n which is fast
- 2:48:11enough so the tail events Decay quite
- 2:48:15quickly and the the width over which the
- 2:48:17gaussian approximation holds is much
- 2:48:20larger than the natural width of the of
- 2:48:22the gaussian itself so it it's it's not
- 2:48:25too bad in this case
- 2:48:27but now look at what happens for power
- 2:48:29law distribution parallel tails
- 2:48:40so parallel Tails but I've already
- 2:48:42assumed that mu is greater than two
- 2:48:47and in this case because otherwise the
- 2:48:50central limit theorem as it stands does
- 2:48:52not hold and I'm going to speak about
- 2:48:53that in in two minutes
- 2:48:55but even though if mu is greater than 2
- 2:48:58then what you can show is that Delta
- 2:49:01star
- 2:49:02is now square root of n log n
- 2:49:09so the central limit theorem has a width
- 2:49:13a natural width which is square root of
- 2:49:15M and you're only allowed to use it
- 2:49:19until
- 2:49:21points that are not square root of any
- 2:49:24way but square root of n log n away
- 2:49:27so it's barely larger than square root
- 2:49:29of n
- 2:49:31so very quickly actually
- 2:49:33the gaussian becomes something else
- 2:49:35and in this case we know exactly what it
- 2:49:38becomes
- 2:49:39it turns out that in the parallel case
- 2:49:41whatever the value of mu
- 2:49:46these Tails here
- 2:49:50are exactly the same Tail as you started
- 2:49:53with from
- 2:49:58so you started from a row of X that had
- 2:50:01a parallel tail with an index mu so he
- 2:50:05repeated for clarity so I'm assuming row
- 2:50:08of X is X to the minus 1 minus mu
- 2:50:11I'm summing these X's together
- 2:50:16because mu is greater than 2 the central
- 2:50:18limit theorem holds so I know that I'm
- 2:50:20going to get the central region which is
- 2:50:22gaussian but very very quickly
- 2:50:26you know as soon as I'm a little bit out
- 2:50:28of the square root of n region only log
- 2:50:30n away square root of login away
- 2:50:33I I fall on to something else and what I
- 2:50:36fall onto is the same distribution I
- 2:50:39started with
- 2:50:41and so you here you have a also an
- 2:50:43illustration of what I was saying is
- 2:50:45that
- 2:50:46the specifics of the distribution hides
- 2:50:49in the tails and so in this case
- 2:50:53the tail is actually the distribution
- 2:50:55you started with itself actually it's
- 2:50:58not exactly the same because there's a
- 2:51:00factor n
- 2:51:01here but it doesn't really matter the
- 2:51:04the functional behavior is the same as
- 2:51:07the one you started with
- 2:51:09so in the case of parallel tails the
- 2:51:11central limit theorem is uh is dangerous
- 2:51:14to use it's formally true
- 2:51:17because when mu is greater than two
- 2:51:19Delta star grows faster than square root
- 2:51:22of n so this theorem will be valid if
- 2:51:25you fix a and b at the end the Tails
- 2:51:29will be expelled far away and so you you
- 2:51:32will get the central limit theorem but
- 2:51:34in Practical applications it it's it
- 2:51:38unless n is enormously large you will
- 2:51:42always be confronted with this problem
- 2:51:44of Tails
- 2:51:46kicking in not very far outside the
- 2:51:50central region okay
- 2:51:53so that's what I want to tell you the
- 2:51:55central limit theorem is well known but
- 2:51:57maybe these stories about the
- 2:51:58limitations are not as well known and
- 2:52:01but still they are very important to
- 2:52:04keep in mind because in Practical
- 2:52:06applications they can be uh extremely
- 2:52:11um
- 2:52:12detrimental to what your
- 2:52:15to your objective
- 2:52:32Okay so
- 2:52:35so that's good so you already knew all
- 2:52:38this
- 2:52:39so something that's maybe less
- 2:52:41well-known is what happens when you
- 2:52:44is strictly less than two
- 2:52:48okay then in this case
- 2:52:51uh Sigma or even M can be infinite and
- 2:52:55clearly if
- 2:52:58if either M or Sigma
- 2:53:01or actually if m is infinite Sigma is
- 2:53:03infinite two but if either of those is
- 2:53:05infinite then this expression is
- 2:53:08meaningless and clearly something must
- 2:53:11happen okay
- 2:53:13so one has to invoke now
- 2:53:17a generalized Central limit theorem
- 2:53:19which is due to
- 2:53:20olivi
- 2:53:26and actually Central in this case is a
- 2:53:29little bit of a misnomer and you'll see
- 2:53:31why
- 2:53:33so
- 2:53:35Levy and
- 2:53:38nidenko
- 2:53:41in the 30s
- 2:53:44foreign
- 2:53:46that will tell you what how you should
- 2:53:48generalize these uh theorems in that
- 2:53:52case
- 2:53:53but before doing this I just want to
- 2:53:56mention something that maybe some of you
- 2:53:58are wondering
- 2:54:00is that I'm insisting on separating
- 2:54:03mu strictly greater than two
- 2:54:06here from you strictly less than two
- 2:54:10here
- 2:54:11and I'll further divide the interval
- 2:54:13from 0 to 2 into mu strictly greater
- 2:54:17than one or strictly less than one
- 2:54:20so as a as a side remark
- 2:54:25what about the cases mu equal to
- 2:54:28mu equal one
- 2:54:31well
- 2:54:32they're actually by continuity you will
- 2:54:34understand what happens in these cases
- 2:54:36too but there are technical difficulties
- 2:54:40with these special cases you need to
- 2:54:43introduce other logs and things like
- 2:54:45that and I don't want to you know give
- 2:54:47all the sub cases so
- 2:54:51it's you know it's it's not a
- 2:54:54it's not a big deal to just forget about
- 2:54:56these special cases for now and if you
- 2:54:59really have to deal with them the
- 2:55:01results are available as well and they
- 2:55:03are not very different from the ones
- 2:55:04that I'm going to speak about
- 2:55:07okay so what does the central limit
- 2:55:09theorem of Levy tell you well it tells
- 2:55:12you that first you should again
- 2:55:14distinguish between the case where mu is
- 2:55:18less than two but greater than one in
- 2:55:21which case m is finite
- 2:55:25and one is finite so
- 2:55:28from the case where mu
- 2:55:30is less than one
- 2:55:32where even M1 even the mean is infinite
- 2:55:37okay
- 2:55:39so if mu is great is between 1 and 2 the
- 2:55:42central limit tells you the following it
- 2:55:44tells you that now SN
- 2:55:47should be written as m n
- 2:55:50plus u n to the one over mu
- 2:55:55okay
- 2:55:56and when n goes to Infinity
- 2:55:59the distribution of U
- 2:56:02tends to uh
- 2:56:05what's called a levy stable distribution
- 2:56:10Maybe
- 2:56:12stable
- 2:56:14distribution
- 2:56:20which is the analog of the gaussian when
- 2:56:24mu is greater than two
- 2:56:25so I introduced two indices here to
- 2:56:29describe the levy distribution
- 2:56:31one
- 2:56:33is Mu is the exponent of the tail itself
- 2:56:36and the other is beta and beta is called
- 2:56:40the asymmetry parameter
- 2:56:43so let me explain what beta is
- 2:56:46so I'm assuming here that rho of x
- 2:56:50decays when X goes to plus or minus
- 2:56:54infinity
- 2:56:55as C plus minus over X
- 2:56:59to the OnePlus mean
- 2:57:01okay
- 2:57:03so I'm assuming a parallel tail but the
- 2:57:06amplitude this parameter here is called
- 2:57:08the amplitude the tail amplitude so the
- 2:57:10amplitude of the tail doesn't
- 2:57:12necessarily uh is not necessarily the
- 2:57:15same to the right or to the left you
- 2:57:18might have a distribution that's fat
- 2:57:19tail to the right and thin tail to the
- 2:57:22left of Vice Versa or whatever
- 2:57:25so for example even if you have in the
- 2:57:28case you have a an X that is a positive
- 2:57:31random variable then the left tail
- 2:57:33doesn't even exist the distribution is
- 2:57:35zero so formally C minus would be zero
- 2:57:38in that case Okay so this is the general
- 2:57:40assumption that you have Halo Tails both
- 2:57:43in the left and in the right and beta
- 2:57:46is simply C plus minus E minus over C
- 2:57:50plus plus C minus
- 2:57:53so it's an asymmetric parameter telling
- 2:57:56you how much uh
- 2:57:59lopsided is the distribution to the left
- 2:58:02or to the heavy side and it's to the
- 2:58:04left compared to the right or vice versa
- 2:58:06okay so in the case of symmetric
- 2:58:08distributions C plus equals c minus and
- 2:58:11beta is zero
- 2:58:14Okay so
- 2:58:16you have a family of distributions which
- 2:58:18are called The Levy stable distributions
- 2:58:20and they are not known explicitly in
- 2:58:23general there's no I can't write like
- 2:58:25the gaussian an explicit formula
- 2:58:28but there are things that we know about
- 2:58:30these Levy distributions and one of them
- 2:58:33is that LMU beta of U times when you you
- 2:58:40goes to Infinity
- 2:58:43to
- 2:58:44um
- 2:58:46something that
- 2:58:48well let's say that U goes to plus
- 2:58:50infinity to simplify it goes to C plus
- 2:58:54over U to the OnePlus U
- 2:58:58so
- 2:59:00you remember I told you that in the
- 2:59:02central limit theorem case
- 2:59:05if you stop by a parallel you recover a
- 2:59:08parallel in the Tails and the tail
- 2:59:10slowly disappear
- 2:59:11and the parallel is exactly the same as
- 2:59:13the one you started with
- 2:59:17in the case of the levy theorems
- 2:59:20you keep a parallel forever because this
- 2:59:22is the limiting distribution
- 2:59:27is when n goes to Infinity
- 2:59:30and the parallel is the same as the one
- 2:59:32you started with okay
- 2:59:34in the middle there's something
- 2:59:36different that can happen but the tails
- 2:59:39are actually preserved so that's why
- 2:59:43C in this case is not really adapted
- 2:59:45because in this case it's really the
- 2:59:48tails that survive and that specify the
- 2:59:51distribution to which your converging to
- 2:59:56last thing before going to the case mu
- 2:59:58lesson one you see that when mu goes to
- 3:00:022
- 3:00:07one over mu goes to one half
- 3:00:11and LU beta
- 3:00:13converges to a gaussian one can show
- 3:00:15that that Lu beta for any value of beta
- 3:00:18and mu beta becomes gaussian
- 3:00:21so n to the one over mu becomes square
- 3:00:23root of n
- 3:00:24and LU beta becomes
- 3:00:29the gaussian
- 3:00:31and so you you have a kind of seamless
- 3:00:34transition between the case of Levi
- 3:00:38and the gaussian central limit theorem
- 3:00:40where this in the central limit theorem
- 3:00:42this statement here with square root of
- 3:00:44n instead of the of n to the 1 over mu
- 3:00:48is exactly the same statement as this
- 3:00:50one here
- 3:00:51okay you see that if I subtract MN from
- 3:00:55SN and divide by square root of n I'm
- 3:00:57left with the random variable U which is
- 3:00:59the thing that I was interested in both
- 3:01:05okay I'll come back to the one over mu
- 3:01:07in a second but uh before doing that let
- 3:01:10me Express what happens in the case uh
- 3:01:14mu lesson one well in the case lesson
- 3:01:17one there's not even this term now and
- 3:01:19in the case and and mu less than one
- 3:01:23what you have to write is that SN is u n
- 3:01:26to the one over mu
- 3:01:30and again this here the same thing holds
- 3:01:33that is peer View
- 3:01:37tense when n goes to Infinity
- 3:01:39to a lady distribution a levy stable
- 3:01:43distribution
- 3:01:45but now its index will be less than one
- 3:01:47and that's the only thing that changes
- 3:01:51okay so these are the
- 3:01:55the statements the statements are if you
- 3:01:58shift and rescale correctly
- 3:02:01and in the case mu lesson one you don't
- 3:02:03even have to shift you just have to
- 3:02:04rescale then
- 3:02:07the little variable that remains once
- 3:02:11shifted and rescaled converges for large
- 3:02:14n to Universal distribution
- 3:02:16which in the gaussian case is completely
- 3:02:18independent of rho and in the lady case
- 3:02:21depends on the Tails and only on the
- 3:02:24Tails of row okay
- 3:02:26you see again these are not as universal
- 3:02:29as the gaussian which doesn't depend on
- 3:02:31anything
- 3:02:32but you you're left with two parameters
- 3:02:36that describe
- 3:02:37the Tails of rovex
- 3:02:41one parameter describes the functional
- 3:02:43dependence as a function of x the speed
- 3:02:46of the Decay mu and the other parameter
- 3:02:48describes the asymmetry of the
- 3:02:52of the tail amplitudes okay
- 3:02:57great now I want to
- 3:03:00tell you a last remark before
- 3:03:03um stop sorry and yes
- 3:03:07I have a question about uh this part so
- 3:03:11this holds only for
- 3:03:13um distributions that are exactly power
- 3:03:15laws or for anything that has power loss
- 3:03:19tails
- 3:03:20yeah okay so again I'm trying to
- 3:03:22simplify you right but you could
- 3:03:25actually have what's called uh slow
- 3:03:27functions multiplying these these
- 3:03:30parallels and the theorems would still
- 3:03:32hold so for example a slow function is a
- 3:03:35log logarithm log is a slow function so
- 3:03:38I could put a log here
- 3:03:41if you want
- 3:03:43and it wouldn't change the the final
- 3:03:45result okay but so what is important is
- 3:03:50the the structure of the power law in
- 3:03:52the Tails but if the if the power law is
- 3:03:55uh Dressed with some uh slow function
- 3:03:59the notion of slow function can be
- 3:04:01formalized uh completely but think of a
- 3:04:05log as a slow function or log to some
- 3:04:06power then uh you're you'll still in the
- 3:04:10on the safe side okay
- 3:04:13was that your question
- 3:04:15uh yes yeah I was a bit wondering about
- 3:04:18what you said before about the
- 3:04:20information uh going uh in the tales uh
- 3:04:25so like where will that information go
- 3:04:28but that's maybe okay so so that's why I
- 3:04:30insisted on the fact that this is a
- 3:04:32really uh kind of flipped situation from
- 3:04:36the central limit theorem in the central
- 3:04:38limit theorem that the information is
- 3:04:40hidden in details but in the in the
- 3:04:44generalized lady case the information in
- 3:04:47details is the same as the one you
- 3:04:49started with so the information is
- 3:04:51is in the bulk is diffused in the bulk
- 3:04:54it's hidden in the way you converge to
- 3:04:57the asymptotic distribution but not not
- 3:05:00in the Tails everywhere
- 3:05:02okay thank you
- 3:05:06um
- 3:05:07okay so the last remark I wanted to tell
- 3:05:09you and it's too bad I have to erase the
- 3:05:11Blackboard was
- 3:05:13so I'm going to erase just a little bit
- 3:05:15of Blackboard just to tell you what I
- 3:05:18want to tell you and expand on that
- 3:05:20later
- 3:05:24so you know roughly speaking SM
- 3:05:29if I for Simplicity I'm going to think
- 3:05:32of symmetric distribution such that m is
- 3:05:350
- 3:05:36but you know I know that upon a shift
- 3:05:42I can always
- 3:05:44go back to that case
- 3:05:47but just for Simplicity
- 3:05:52what these Central limit theorem tells
- 3:05:55you is that SN is of all the square root
- 3:05:58of n when mu is greater than two
- 3:06:01and S N is of order n to the 1 over mu
- 3:06:06when mu is less than two okay
- 3:06:10and because mu is less than two you see
- 3:06:12that one over mu is greater than square
- 3:06:14root of n
- 3:06:15so the spread of SN grows faster with n
- 3:06:21then square root of n when mu is less
- 3:06:23than 2. so when mu is less than 2 N to
- 3:06:26the 1 over mu
- 3:06:28is much greater than square root of n
- 3:06:33and this is you know expected in a sense
- 3:06:36it's because you have these
- 3:06:38broad distributions so sometimes you'll
- 3:06:41have a very big event and therefore you
- 3:06:44expect that the spread of the
- 3:06:45distribution is going to go faster
- 3:06:47because you have uh um extreme events in
- 3:06:51your time series or in your series of X
- 3:06:54but actually if you remember I told you
- 3:06:57already about n to the one over mu
- 3:07:00and that was in the context of the
- 3:07:02maximum of n random variables and I told
- 3:07:05you that actually mm
- 3:07:07is also
- 3:07:09of older and the one over mu
- 3:07:13but this time for any value of mu okay
- 3:07:17and so what you see is that
- 3:07:20and again this is what I'm going to
- 3:07:22expand on in detail next week
- 3:07:25is that in the case mu greater than 2
- 3:07:31SN
- 3:07:33is much larger than MN
- 3:07:36okay
- 3:07:39for example take mu equals three
- 3:07:41then the largest of n random variables
- 3:07:44grows like n to the one-third
- 3:07:46but the sum goes like square root of n
- 3:07:49and so asymptotically the sum is much
- 3:07:53bigger than any of its terms okay even
- 3:07:56the maximum is small compared to the sum
- 3:07:59so you're in a kind of democratic regime
- 3:08:07quote unquote of course
- 3:08:09where everybody contributes equally more
- 3:08:13or less to to the sum and there's no big
- 3:08:16outlier I mean there are outliers but
- 3:08:18they they remain negligible on the scale
- 3:08:21of the phenomenon as a whole okay
- 3:08:24but you see that it's completely
- 3:08:26different and this is where it's
- 3:08:28interesting in the case new lesson two
- 3:08:31because in this case SN is of the same
- 3:08:34order as MN
- 3:08:37so the whole sum
- 3:08:40in a sense
- 3:08:41as the same
- 3:08:44amplitude as just one guy
- 3:08:48and so in this case you have a complete
- 3:08:51breakdown of this Democratic
- 3:08:54representation because one guy dominates
- 3:08:57completely the whole sum
- 3:09:00and so this you know if you remember
- 3:09:01this goes hand in hand with the remarks
- 3:09:04I gave you about distribution of thumb
- 3:09:06sizes and the idea of a representative
- 3:09:09firm uh or representative agent if you
- 3:09:13want to describe the whole population by
- 3:09:15its average then you better not be in
- 3:09:18such a situation where a single guy
- 3:09:21which you know has a lot of wealth or a
- 3:09:25single firm which is very big actually
- 3:09:27dominates the whole
- 3:09:28phenomenon so in physics terms
- 3:09:32we'll speak about
- 3:09:34delocalize sums in this case where the
- 3:09:37sum is delocalized among all its cons
- 3:09:40components
- 3:09:42and localized
- 3:09:44in this case where the sum is actually
- 3:09:46concentrated in uh in in a few terms and
- 3:09:51so
- 3:09:52I'll call this concentrated
- 3:09:55and will speak a lot about
- 3:09:56concentrations in the next lecture
- 3:09:58because this is a very very important
- 3:10:01phenomenon that appears both in physics
- 3:10:05but also in economics and so I want to
- 3:10:08spend some time speaking about this
- 3:10:10General phenomenon that I will then
- 3:10:12illustrate with the models that lead to
- 3:10:16a concentration transition a transition
- 3:10:18between the two regimes that appear as a
- 3:10:21function of the values of the parameters
- 3:10:23if you want Okay so
- 3:10:25I'm done for today
- 3:10:28um next week we'll take a a normal
- 3:10:31Rhythm hopefully with no technical
- 3:10:34glitches
- 3:10:35at the beginning so I'll speak as I said
- 3:10:37uh between nine and ten forty five then
- 3:10:4115 minutes break and Valentina you have
- 3:10:45to decide whether you want to spend the
- 3:10:47narrow more I would favor you know an
- 3:10:50hour on the 15 at least but you'll be
- 3:10:53you'll do as you please and in the
- 3:10:57meantime I'm again very sorry not to be
- 3:10:59facing you for real because I think it's
- 3:11:01much more fun that way
- 3:11:02and I have no idea whether you find a
- 3:11:05rhythm okay whether it's too slow too
- 3:11:08fast I have no real questions during the
- 3:11:11lecture so it's it's uh
- 3:11:13it's very bothering but I guess that I
- 3:11:16have to get used to it in and you're
- 3:11:18already more used to it than I am so um
- 3:11:21anyway I don't know if I have things in
- 3:11:23the chat
- 3:11:38you see jokes
- 3:11:46okay
- 3:11:52no remarks
- 3:11:58yeah I'm clearly here for you to
- 3:12:00understand and and enjoy so please give
- 3:12:03feedback feedback for me to go in the
- 3:12:06right direction
- 3:12:16okay
- 3:12:21okay well take care and
- 3:12:24see you next week
- 3:12:27thank you goodbye
- 3:12:30thank you bye
- 3:12:34thank you see you next week
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