[Blindmath] Perhaps OT: Articles on Working in the Financial Field

[Roopakshi Pathania]

Hi all,

I was excited to read this Ny Times article, which actually focuses on a rather different issue, but features a blind lady who is a managing director of an investment firm.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/magazine/03Braille-t.html

In fact, I was so excited that I dug up 2 more articles written about her.

http://www.usatoday.com/money/2001-02-16-bcovfri.htm

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,942851,00.html

I thought it appropriate for the list because the featured individual is in Finance and Investing, which for the most part involves quantitative analysis and reading graphs, even though Ms. Sloate admits relying on others to analyze spreadsheets and charts.
Personally, I don’t like depending on others to do my work, but I suppose that sometimes it can’t be helped and lots of people are comfortable with it.

Aside from her comments on Braille, and the lack of methods for dealing with Mathematical models, she mentions a few things that I too personally believe in.
I’m pasting some interesting snippets from the other 2 articles here.

Like most on Wall Street, information is Sloate's lifeblood. "I'm an information junkie," she says. "If I went cold turkey, I'd be in worse shape than a three-pack-a-day smoker without a cigarette." The trick — and the key to success — is getting data into her head.

Prospecting for new investors is also tougher. Sloate says many just aren't comfortable handing their money to a blind person. So she doesn't go out of her way to tell people on the phone about her disability. "When I show up with a dog they are at best skeptical," she says. "But that wears off when they engage me in conversation and figure out I'm not a total idiot."

Her interest in stocks began when she was 10. Her dad, Kelly, who was an investor, would call her in on New Year's Eve to calculate the value of his portfolio. She says she'd do the calculations in her head faster than he could with a pad and pencil.

As a girl, she had played basketball by positioning her feet on a crack in the court and shooting from memory. Now, she still operates
from memory. Four hours each day and nine hours on Saturday she listens to readers recite the volumes of technical detail about companies and the economy
that she must evaluate to make recommendations for clients.

Regards

"Markets are constantly in a state of uncertainty and flux and money is make by discounting the obvious and betting on the unexpected."
~ George Soros