Is anyone else finding quant painful? i started with ethics and then econ… it went pretty fast… but quant i feel like i’m dragging…
I had no problems except that I couldn’t remember the formulas when doing to self test…
A suggestion for quant – use test prep material if you can. The CFAI texts are nearly impossible to get through and they’re incredibly boring. I was in the same situation as you – breezed through ethics and econ when studying initially, then hit a wall on quant. I foolishly spent 2 months on quant before I decided to pay up for test prep material. Then I breezed through quant in 1 week with the software and a much more condensed set of reading material. In the end it ended up being my strongest subject by far. Other pieces of advice: Read the stuff once, then just focus on doing questions. Only then will you actually be able to make sense of the formulas, and once you’ve done a ton of questions, the formulas that count and that end up on the exam end up coming naturally to you (some that come to mind include sharpe, safety first, covariance, standard deviation, mean, absolute mean deviation, R2). For the really deep formulas like kurtosis and skewness, understand what they mean and understand how to evaluate on a chart, but don’t worry really about memorizing. You will more than likely get a question or two on these topics but they probably won’t ask you to calculate, just interpret (i.e. is this chart positively or negatively skewed, if you have an excess kurtosis of 1 what does that mean, etc.). For the probability section, draw tree diagrams and you won’t need to remember any formulas. I can never solve a Bayes theorem question using the formula, but I can solve them all day using tree diagrams. So final advice - read through the material but don’t overkill it, be mindful of how much time you’re spending on the quant section (this is small relative to some big ones like ethics and FRA), do a lot of questions, and keep quizzing yourself as you go through your studies. In the end, I think you’ll find that you won’t have any problems with quant.
jcaseyjones Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > A suggestion for quant – use test prep material > if you can. The CFAI texts are nearly impossible > to get through and they’re incredibly boring. I > was in the same situation as you – breezed > through ethics and econ when studying initially, > then hit a wall on quant. I foolishly spent 2 > months on quant before I decided to pay up for > test prep material. Then I breezed through quant > in 1 week with the software and a much more > condensed set of reading material. In the end it > ended up being my strongest subject by far. > > > Other pieces of advice: > > Read the stuff once, then just focus on doing > questions. Only then will you actually be able to > make sense of the formulas, and once you’ve done a > ton of questions, the formulas that count and that > end up on the exam end up coming naturally to you > (some that come to mind include sharpe, safety > first, covariance, standard deviation, mean, > absolute mean deviation, R2). > > For the really deep formulas like kurtosis and > skewness, understand what they mean and understand > how to evaluate on a chart, but don’t worry really > about memorizing. You will more than likely get a > question or two on these topics but they probably > won’t ask you to calculate, just interpret (i.e. > is this chart positively or negatively skewed, if > you have an excess kurtosis of 1 what does that > mean, etc.). > > For the probability section, draw tree diagrams > and you won’t need to remember any formulas. I can > never solve a Bayes theorem question using the > formula, but I can solve them all day using tree > diagrams. > > So final advice - read through the material but > don’t overkill it, be mindful of how much time > you’re spending on the quant section (this is > small relative to some big ones like ethics and > FRA), do a lot of questions, and keep quizzing > yourself as you go through your studies. In the > end, I think you’ll find that you won’t have any > problems with quant. Good advice, Thanks.
Look at what the LOS says! Do you have to calculate something (like a confidence interval) or just be able to discuss it (kurtosis). No need in over doing it…you’ve got plenty else to worry about. Also, there’s a 0.0001% chance you’ll actually remember everything in Quant the first time through so don’t kill yourself on it right now. Just focus on understanding it now and aim for mastery with the reviews and lots and lots of practice questions. Some people may disagree with that but it’s a less stressful way to approach it.
The above advice is pretty sound- understanding concepts is what matters, so try to remember what kurtosis/skewness is, rather than how to calculate it. Quant is actually a pretty easy section on the exam if you put the time in, although it can look pretty daunting.
Wait till you see Level II quant. It is just 5% of the exam but gives unbearable pain.
I have Schweser notes from 2008. They are much more concise and to the point. I just finished quant this week. I took it one reading at a time. Here is what I did: 1) Read through the material while highlighting/underlining 2) Go back through and make flash cards for equations and any other information that you are not 100% on (this helped a lot with statistics) 3) Drill the flash cards. (This helped as well) I made sure that I understood not only the symbols and where they go, but what the symbols meant and how all the parts interacted 4) Answer the review questions 5) Review areas where you had difficulty. Were errors just simple mistakes such as not finding the square root of n for confidence intervals, or are the mistakes from a lack of understanding? Review if necessary. 6) Lather, rinse, and repeat for other readings.
Initially i found it difficult since i dont have finance background. But with plenty of math background, once i read it twice and gave lot of exam questions from Schweser QBank, i now like it a lot. I prepared my own notes as i was going through Quant, i found it quite useful for review before going for more questions. I guess the key is practice for Quant.