Re: opt_bs bug?

[Scott Ballantyne <sdb ssr com>]

Hi Hal,

Thanks for clearing up the misunderstanding on the use of the word
"anger".

I can't use these functions for real work, because I don't trade
futures options. I am not saying they are all wrong. They are not
wrong, they are correct for futures options, as far as I know. In my
opinion, the documentation is incorrect.

I do use Black-Scholes everyday to manage stock options, with real
money invested in them. I have been using 'worksheet' formulas, but
had to make a new spreadsheet this weekend and decided to try the
opt_bs ones, which is how I noticed the difficulty. Having such a
thing would be a great convenience to me.

I'm happy to implement it if you are too busy. I'm not sure I will be
able to, since I don't think I can build Gnumeric on my OS platform,
which is an oldish version of FreeBSD. To use the more recent versions
of Gnumeric, I have had to resort to using windows.

Thank you for your comments.

Best,
Scot

> I'm sorry, the phrase "use in anger" means "use to get some actual work 
> done", eg some valuation for investment or trading purposes, academic 
> research or similar. As opposed to experimentation or others' 
> hypothetical use. I seem to be very bad at separating the local 
> vernacular from that which is understood by all English speakers and I 
> apologise for this.
>
> Are you actually using these functions for real work?
> If you do really care please document all your variables, and check the 
> test workbook which is distributed along with the source, then provide 
> your own test cases with sources along with your compelling reason for 
> making the change.
>
> Analysing and understanding the changes, implementing them, re-doing all 
> the tests and so on is probably, for a non-genius like me, at least 
> 30-40 hours work. I'd prefer not to do this work unless there's a pretty 
> good reason.
>
> About once a year someone joins the list to say what's been done is all 
> wrong. (This was me 7 years ago). Each such person has a different idea 
> as to why it's all wrong. Frequently it seems to boil down to I used the 
> standard CFA options textbook and they read a different one. Nobody 
> seems to use these functions (or if they do they're using them with no 
> problems). The functions have been in this form for about 7 years. Jody 
> Goldberg cast his eye over them before committing them on my behalf, in 
> addition to being a vastly better hacker than me he also works in the 
> field and they made enough sense for him to commit them as they did to 
> me writing them. Changing them breaks any workbook that is using them as 
> they are. However this is worth doing if they're calculating wrongly for 
> these users.
>
> If they're wrong and nobody uses them there's a fair case for their 
> removal from gnumeric.
>
>
> Kind regards,
> Hal
>
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