[R-SIG-Finance] Career/Educational Advice - First Post

[David Kane]

My personal opinions . . .

> 1. I have been looking at some masters graduate programmes and they
> come in all shapes and sizes. ...  As
> a quant in the industry, does the content of these degrees matter?

No.

> 2. How much of open-source technology, R/Rmetrics is being used by the
> financial industry?

Lots. If you aren't using R now, you will be someday. Further thoughts at:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=966354

> 3. Is it possible for someone to be a quant without any post-graduate
> training?

Yes. Your best bet is to get involved with an open source finance
project. That will allow you to build your skills and gain some
expertise, thereby making a job search much easier (although no job
search will be easy this year.

Good luck,

Dave Kane