Looks like someone is reading up on ex. I've just gotten a whole bunch of my old answers upvoted. :)

Hi @Wildcard. Long time no see. How are you doing?

morning, chat.

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@Tim you have already been asked not to use this room as your dumping room for complaints against other users or sites.

I understand your concern.

This is not the place for it, we are not qualified to judge who's right and we can't do anything about it anyway.

but why can you use this place for your dumping your own complaints about other people and sites?

almost everyone can dump their complaints about other sites and people, no matter how prominent who they complain of are

I have had enough with that PLT academic, with tolerating him most of time, and now I have lost speech everywhere.

everywhere PLT-related

I only wanted to expose him

I am just a self learner, while he is a more or less established academic.

@terdon Thanks for the edit, but I use ./* as the pattern, so no -- really needed. I'll let it be though.

@Kusalananda Ah, duh. So you do, sorry. I missed that.

No worries :-)

This probably isn't quite the right site for this, but does anyone have experience working with Quandl?

@FaheemMitha doing well, thanks. Learning Python, and algorithms, and stuff. Moving from the pure sysadmin side of things into readiness for something closer to a software engineer.

@Wildcard Career transition?

@FaheemMitha that's my plan. I've always known way, way more about software development than a typical sysadmin.

@Wildcard Oh. Where are you currently working?

@FaheemMitha I just finished a long-term consulting contract, and although there is another one lined up, the talks about it are somewhat on hold due to COVID-19. I'll be delivering a training shortly (paid), but other than that I'm free.

@Wildcard Oh, so you're a consultant? I see.

Yep. How about you?

@Wildcard Hmm? What's the question?

@FaheemMitha How's your career going through all of this? Are you doing about the same thing, maybe working from home more often?

@Wildcard Do you have any experience downloading financial data? Preferably using something like a Python API?

@Wildcard I don't have a job. I would like to get some part time work, but I've been saying that for a while.

Oh, and obviously I don't want to pay much (if anything for it). They charge an arm and a leg for it.

@Wildcard I did have a small business, but I think it's mostly dead, at least for now.

@FaheemMitha you mean downloading like your own bank statements and such?

@FaheemMitha :( Sorry to hear that.

@Wildcard No, like stock prices.

@Wildcard It happens.

@FaheemMitha ah—no, no experience with that at all. Seems likely there would be an open source way to do that, somewhere.

@Wildcard There are options. Not great ones. Still working on it.

Hence that question about Quandl above.

@Wildcard Any particular area that you are interested in?

@FaheemMitha are you trying to guide your own stock investments, or set up some kind of business model on the data?

@Wildcard Guide my own stock investments. Possibly do modelling too. At this point, I don't know. I don't know anything about investing, but inherited some equities. So I'm trying to learn.

I find a good Indian site, surprisingly, which has been quite useful. Lots of interesting reading.

@FaheemMitha makes sense. Just beware of xkcd.com/1570

I have Statistics PhD, so it ought to be good for something.

Currently just reading. Which is probably a good thing to do.

I meaning, sitting on my hands.

I keep thinking something is a good idea to invest it, and then realise afterwards there are problems with it.

Two math degrees, one degree in statistics. And my conclusion about the stock market, after some reading, is that it's a great way to lose money.

I recently wrote on that site I mentioned that if you don't know what you are doing, you're better off going to a casino. It would come to the same thing in the end, but it would be more fun.

I thought that was both witty and accurate, but it didn't get much of a reaction.

I haven't actually purchased any stocks yet. I guess I will have to do eventually.

Gotcha. Well, best of luck in getting some new work!

It's probably not well known, but one of the smartest people in human history lost a lock of money on the stock market over 300 years ago. There's an interesting and detailed article about it here - royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsnr.2018.0018

And for once, no paywall.

@FaheemMitha If I may ask, which areas of statistics are good or in demand for industrial career?

multivariate statistics, time series, regression, nonparametric statistics, survival analysis, ...?

Would you like to use some of your statistics expertise in applications?