My BlogRISK : ?
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mblog has gone where is it>
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi Neil,
You own two different sites:
That second site is titled “My BlogRISK : ?” — is that the one you’re looking for?
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Hi Neil,
I checked your blog’s history, and that blog never had any content on it. Is it possible you had a blog with the same name at another address?
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Thank you Rachel. Sorry – I am a rather ancient type!!! –
It is possible that, during the night as I completed my last entry – Cornell Sketches – and turned to get the Risk page out of the way, I perhaps and certainly inadvertently pushed the wrong key? That would have been under the musicmusicandwords site. Perhaps I deleted it? SCREAM! Perhaps ugh I have backup somewhere in my ironmongery -
Hi Neil,
It’s not that easy to delete an entire site — we want to make sure that doesn’t happen by accident, so it requires clicking a confirmation link in an email. And we do keep track when posts and pages are deleted. I see you made some changes recently to your musicmusicandwords site, and I see the newly published “Cornell Sketches” post there, but nothing was changed on your other site.
Do you remember some of the content you had published on “My BlogRISK : ?” that’s now missing? That might help me dig around to look for it.
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hi rachel. |I found some draft parts which I hope may help.
!!!!!!!!!Handrawn graph
First, please keep in mind that this is a notional approach. I cannot offer mathematical processes nor scholarly references to back it up.
Second, my definition of Risk is an aggregate of risks in every day life – from the mundane (the risk of not brushing your teeth after every meal) to the imperative (the risk of not carrying insurance on your home). So line (A) is the total of the risks in our lives over time. As it does in real life, the level of Risk varies over time.
Line (B). the Highest Acceptable Risk Level is the ceiling on what amount of total risk we can bear to have in our lives.
Anything above that Level forces us into a panic mode, the (D) area. Once there, our main goal is to reduce the Risk Level, by removing the high risk activity as quickly as possible or insuring against the perceived probability of loss.
Line (C), the Lowest Acceptable Risk Level, represents a rather languid approach to life, minimal Risk but perhaps just enough to keep us on our toes.
The (E) area is where most Risks are covered or perhaps do not exist. Perhaps the Goody Goody life? Boredom might be the principal feature of this sector. If we are unhappy there, efforts are made to spice up our existence by taking on additional risks.
Anyway, so much for that apparatus. You can fool around with it.
I did not reach the stage of calculating risk aggregation – it just was a concept remember.
[But just the other day. I serendipitously came across a June 18 2013 BBC 4 talk with David Spiegelhalter. Back in 1976, I would have been delighted, no astonished, to meet up with such a kindred spirit. But then he was only 23 then and just starting out on his remarkable journey into the realm of risk. See http://www.statslab.cam.ac.uk/Dept/People/Spiegelhalter/davids.html. In his talk, he describes the ‘micromort’ concept of Stanford University’s Ronald Howard and his own ‘microlife’ construct. If risk aggregation makes any sense, perhaps the ‘micros’ could form the input.]
A CONTEST – to be continued in Part 2
A CONTEST – Part 2But then my weakness for the chase kicked in. I wanted to understand how risk was defined and used for different applications. Recall, that the internet and computerized data bases were not around back in 1975-6. And so I spent too many, but happy, hours hunting through the card catalogs and book stacks of Cornell’s many libraries, photocopying as I went. I was sure I had cornered the market on Risk!
Then I wanted to know the etymological origin of the word.
It was at this point that my thesis was sort of put aside. Well actually I had a draft which went far beyond the original offshore oil and gas conundrum and included the above graph. I showed it to my thesis professor, a zoning and historic preservation specialist, who shook his head (who could blame him) and promptly sent me over to show my ideas off to a Cornell Business School guru. The latter kept my paper for a few days, called me in to explain a few points, then told me in essence to go back to the Planning Department and start over again. As I was leaving his office, he asked to keep the paper as a quid pro quo for his review. My antenna started quivering and I had the quickness of mind to tell him I had some corrections to make on the paper and would bring an amended version back. I never did. So much for academic free-dom.
So back to my chase. In Cornell’s Uris Library, I struck gold in the form of An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language by the Reverend Walter W. Skeat, 1911 edition, Oxford’s Clarendon Press. His entry on “risk” in this full edition (not the concise) fascinated me.
[At this point, i had intended inserting the full entry from Rev. Skeat’s work. However, as related in my August 7, 2013 blog post, Oxford University Press does not now allow such replication. But I recommend that risk afficianados track down a copy of the unabridged dictionary. For present purposes, I will attempt to paraphrase the points pertinent to my argument.]
Skeat traced the word risk to Latin, Italian and Spanish origins. And it’s all about rocks. Specifically rocks jutting up in the sea endangering ships. He finds therefore that the word originated among sailors. Skeat writes that the Spanish ‘arriesgar’ means ‘to go into danger’; but its literal translation is ‘to go against a rock.’ ‘Risk’ he argues is thusly derived.
However, in proper scholarly fashion, Skeats also describes an alternative in L. Marcel Devic, Dictionnaire étymologique des mots français d’origine orientale: arabe, persan, turc, hébreu, malais (1876 Paris, Imprimerie Nationale). Devic writes of a derivation of ‘risk’ from the Arabic, ‘rizq’, meaning riches, good fortune.
But Skeat points out, first , that ‘risk’ is bad fortune. Second, he argues that Devic erred in his analyses.A CONTEST – PART 3 AND THE LAST PART – CHEERS!
Now we get to the interesting bit.
If there is a 70% probability that you will lose your shirts (three of Brooks Brothers’ best) in a $1,000 investment on Wall Street, we surely all agree that in one Skeatsian sense , this means that rocks surround your ship of much hope. Except for a smallish opening (OK, several smallish openings) just large enough for the hull to scrape through. But our charts (hah) are not too reliable. And although you checked out the owners, officers, the crew and the vessel registration, hey who can you trust? Plus, there’s talk of a big storm, maybe a longlasting storm.
One of your pals says to you, “you’re a real risk taker, you numbskull. You should keep your money in the bank instead of throwing it away like that.” Well, you know that he is really complimenting you. After all, risk-takers are admired as catalysts of economic growth, of innovation, investors in the future. Well, maybe a thousand dollars won’t make you the talk of Silicon Valley.
But then you pause and think. I’m not really a gambler. I want to make money, not lose it. Why think negative. Skeats says risk is “bad fortune.” I want “good fortune” for myself and my family. So what can I call myself? If the 70% probability of loss is a risk, what do I call the 30% probability of profit?
So here is the CONTEST.
Let me have your ideas for the antonym of risk.
Maybe we need a more positive spin on investing in this period of economic turndown. We seem to spend a lot of time and energy of the best minds in the business world on risk reduction via derivatives, for example, Why not focus more on the profit side of the equation?
So get to work folks. You can post your ideas on this blog.
The prize? Hmmm. Maybe some billionaire can offer an award. The best I can think of is an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary – or in a revised edition of the Reverend Skeats’ tome! No guarantees though. I will post a few ideas of my own shortly to get things going. -
Thanks, Neil — that did help!
I found that post on your musicmusicandwords blog here:
http://musicmusicandwords.wordpress.com/2013/07/30/a-contest/
You may want to look through all of the posts on that blog to see if any other posts meant for your “My BlogRISK : ?” blog ended up there. Please let me know if I can do anything more to help with that. :)
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Rachel – BRILLIANT. I would recommend you for a promotion. But then you would be lost to people like me ! So who do I talk to about a bonus???
Thanks again.
Neil
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Rachel, I think I figured out what happened/ The RISK piece was ‘pinned’ to the front of the musicmusicandwords blog. I wanted to get it out of the way so I unpinned it. But what I did not realize – – I do much of my work in bed – is that there are two pages of blogs and I did not see the page turn at the bottom of the page. The Risk piece had slipped back to its original publish date position.so…….
Thanks again for finding my most complicated blog!
Neil -
Hi Neil,
You’re very welcome! I’m so glad the Risk piece wasn’t lost, and that you’ve sorted out what happened on the blog. :) Happy blogging!
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