Welcome to Symbol Manipulation by me, Kyle Binder.


Here is a table of contents, loosely organized by topic.

Most of these essays explore some form of mathematical Symbol Manipulation: e.g. turning data into parameters, turning data into models, turning models into new models, or extracting insights from models.

The above is equivalent to a number of working class professions (e.g. finance, software design, marketing) where the usual flow is:

  1. Show up [or log in] to the office

  2. Manipulate Symbols

  3. Leave; repeat

It's possible to perceive the above as overly clinical and joyless; I mostly disagree. It's a super privileged position to be able to do such work - and yes, most of time there is real GDP growth attributable to these activities; of course, that’s not always the case.

That said, yes, I am a working class "professional" who, after 10+ years, still hasn't quite figured out the what the optimal Ikigai looks like for me:

https://cdn.substack.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F8ffbc654-4bbe-4bbe-8557-ea377e2be818_1269x1200.png

At the risk of seeming too self-absorbed, this is a place for me to help sort some of that personal confusion.

More abstractly, I’ve come to really appreciate Ben Hunt’s use of the term Symbol Manipulation in markets, politics, game theory, and history.

Why Substack?

I'm experimenting with new writing formats. While Substack is the new hotness as of 2021, there are some essays that are absolutely better absorbed as an IPython Notebook, for instance. I'll figure that out too.

In the meantime, tell your friends!

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Finance, Math, Technology