Teach history to avoid mistakes of yesterday’s quants

Quant grads should be taught the follies of LTCM, the Gaussian copula and the London Whale, writes UBS’s Gordon Lee

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”

This article accompanies Risk.net’s updated guide to the world’s leading quantitative finance master’s programmes. The full guide and a ranking of the top 15 courses can be found here.

I recently found myself in a room full of very young – and very bright – master’s in finance students at a top-tier university. I decided to conduct a quick straw poll. I asked whether the assembled grads had heard of the 2012 London Whale incident, in which JP Morgan lost $6.2 billion on a credit derivatives