This looks to another great production from Backlight Productions. They do a really good job of bringing technical coding issues and the subsequent back lashes in society and to the economy in a way that the average consumer can understand how this happens, 
well those who want to understand why. In the footer of this blog you will find the “Quants of Wall Street” Documentary along with what I think are 3 other videos that are truly eye openers, again for those who want to understand the complexities of math models and computer code and how it works with and sometimes destroys current day IT infrastructures and further more how those who know how to work it at a level above what most consumers presently understand to tremendously profit.
Recently I wrote a post relative to the current state of affairs with health insurance exchanges and readers at the Quack I think get this as I have several other posts on the same target of education. All the big news outlets have been talking “complexities” in a number of news articles, well here it is right in front of you with the coding and technologies with health insurance exchanges.
US Consumers and Government Are Learning a Cold Hard Reality Lesson About IT Infrastructure Complexities With Models and Algorithms Thanks to Health Insurance Exchanges
Sadly we have a group of lawmakers who still also live in the “old world” of how technologies were created to improve efficiencies that can’t see how this has progressed in markets to make huge amounts of money as well, so we end up with “Modeling for Inequality With Segmentation”…good video 
at the link helps explain this from a Quant as she sees it. We have a lot of good efforts out there to bring this to the forefront but movies from Michael Moore and Robert Reich do their job and get your attention but that’s where it stops with leaving out the next move and that is requiring accountability for math models and computer code, everything today runs on it, servers running 24/7 making life impacting decisions about all of us, designed with math models and code. Here’s another post from Cathy O’Neill that speaks out about how all this works, she’s a mathematician and quant and she knows.
Cathy O’Neil, Mathematician/Quant: Wall Street Quants The Culture, Big Data Mechanics, Algorithms, Data Mining, Lack of Privacy, Web Profiling, Health Insurance Profiles and Modeling Abuse…
Way back over two years ago I did my own interpretation called “The Attack of the Killer Algorithms”..with showing everyday events on how consumers and others get hurt when bad code and bad models running servers make automated decisions based on the parameters entered in the computer code. I have the Occupy movement to thank that generated the series as that’s what it was all about, even though those protesting didn’t understand it themselves but knew something was wrong and thus you saw in the news, as they didn’t get it either all kinds of articles stating “what is their purpose, I felt the Killer Algorithms were are the root. Since the original group of blog posts I now graduated many videos that help educate at the Algo Duping page, a grouping of educational videos done by people smarter than me.
11-1-2013 New Trailer…Goldman Sachs one made a killing on the flash crash..Nanex…
Insurance companies have a big stake here as well, just look at the classifieds of late, they are looking for tons of Quants, analysts, data miners and so on. This is also another great video from the same production company, talking about “brands” that big corporations sell and his opinion on how we buy from “brands” instead of “people”…we no longer think of things coming from other people and now we look at a company or corporation as where we put our faith, something to be said for this and makes sense to me on how this has evolved over years. “Advertising is here to make us believe human relationships are mediated by corporate products” he states, buy that cool device or clothes that make you cool.
Think about this when you are buying health insurance, I think it’s pretty profound there as you see people, insurance brokers struggling for their existence and buying “the brand”..well the “brand” is not promoting the people…use the link below as an example to where doctors
(the people) are somewhat being casted off. You are buying the “insurance brand” and the doctors in network, not the people if you will. You need the “brand” of what they have considered to be the place to go and be “cool” and get your healthcare needs.
United Healthcare Drops 300 Southwest Florida Doctors While Aetna Announces It Is Expanding Medicare Advantage Doctor Networks With Employer Sponsored Medicare Advantage Plans, No Word Yet On Individual Polices–Clustered Algorithm Analytics Creating “Black Box” Risk Assessments
The more distance you have between your house and your neighbors house the more unhappy we are he states and you need to fill those voids with the offerings of corporations…thinks he’s on to something here with stating that we are so far removed and engaged in the buying and selling of money itself which has nothing to do with buying and selling goods. I have said this a few times with a few different works with way too many corporations “flipping algorithms” for
profits and how the tangible world suffers as a result and we have a huge imbalance. Here’s one example I spotted a while back on buying brands and the use of marketing and selling data…an insurance company and a big pharma company…in my small opinion we are again promoting brands and not all contributing to the “good” with competing with the FDA who is the government agency responsible for determining safety for all of us…sell that brand instead of donating data?
Pharma and Health Insurance Companies Pairing Up, Humana’s Analytics Subsidiary and Lilly To Figure Out How to Save (Make) Money and Provide Better Patient Care–Selling Research Data That Competes With FDA Sentinel Initiative
Furthermore in the video he states the reason things are so expensive today is that 80% of the dollars we spend are going to bankers, who do nothing except run some math models and code. Money has become to expensive the video estates and we end up with situations like “Greece”. Corporate money is always going to be the life blood and humans don’t live off of that, we need food and other items which is true, I can’t eat an algorithms or math model for lunch:)
Journalism and Big Data:
Last but not least here’s a discussion on Big Data…what would a blog post today be without it:) This is a gentleman with a very interesting perspective on how journalists do their work today “let’s interview a data base instead of a person” he states. He talks about the kind of tools that journalists use today versus how it has been in the past. Scroll on down to the footer here and watch the first video and watch Professor Siefe tell you about how some of the news and data is presented today…a good reason to be a skeptic of some of what you read. There’s a very good essay on this topic that can be found at the link below…why math modelers have an even bigger responsibility today…and there’s some interference run here with “branding” at times I would say too.
“On Being a Data Skeptic- Modelers Have A Bigger Responsibility Now Than Ever Before”–A Must Read Essay, Start “Sniffing the Data”…
He states journalists instead of getting a quick few quotes from a CEO should really look more behind the scenes to find out what the corporation or bank is doing that they really don’t want the public to see. I write a series of posts that I label “subsidiary watch” that kind of goes along with that idea. Are journalists hooked on data? The journalist of the future he says is going to have to be different and know about working with statistics he states in the video. The same art of story telling will no go away and new ways of interacting with data will be needed. He states the news rooms will look different as you will have “teams” working together, the journalists, programmers, analysts and perhaps even some data scientists included.
VProBacklight does a really good job with almost anything they put out and really dig to present things in a way consumers can understand the coding and math models that occurs at more than just one level. Data on it’s own can be very misleading he states and if you read here that’s been a staple for a few years. He states The Economist is changing how they present material with presenting more opinions or how they think or if this is just an article with “raw facts”. Another good video worth a watch is “Money and Speed: Inside the Black Box” which features Nanex who we depend on for all our “real” charts out there today with the interactions of algorithms , as well as the #1 Quant in the World, Paul Wilmott and several 
other players. You don’t hardly find any physicists who talk about Wall Street Math not including Nanex charts and the information they offer. If you scroll down to watch the video from Kevin Slavin that had such a huge impact with speaking about algorithms and math models, he talks Nanex as they give us the big data picture on stock market algorithms every day and even provided the SEC with the full version of why the Flash Crash took place. I still wonder about the cases with “stolen code” and if they were a bit of a sham as even the the FBI agent on this case didn’t know what “subversion” was with investigating his case and somewhat really took it out of context with his case:)
Another “Stolen Code” Case on Wall Street Emerges–Hope They Get It Right This Time And Either Prosecute the Case Correctly or Dismiss It-The “Evil” Drop Box Share…
So in summary one does wonder why health insurance just might be so expensive, how much of the policy payments are going to the banks one could ask? When you see health insurers going into investments like this in real estate…one could ask “what’s really going on here”…and do we know the full extent of how expensive this “money” is? What is the cut US Bank and United Healthcare (who also owns a bank but unrelated to this particular story) gets from this for basically doing nothing? How expensive is this money and we do know their profits are still on the rise with 3rd quarter for this year beyond $1.5 Billion. BD
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