Finance / optimization / sports link roundup

I’m hard at work on our upcoming 2.1 release of Solver Foundation. But I’ve come across a few things lately so I thought I’d pass them on.

• My simple heuristic ended up finishing in the top 10% of NCAA tournament entries on espn.com.  At one point I was in the top 1000 on espn.com.  Not bad!
• I enjoy reading posts on "The Sports Economist".
• MetaQuotes Language 4 (MQL4) is a new built-in language for programming of trading strategies.
• Here is a useful list of finance packages for R.
• Here is a very readable article about minimizing conditional value at risk using both linear programming and simulation.
• IBM has had some great analytics commercials lately.
• Check out the new SIAM Journal on Financial Mathematics for free.
• Local fixture Gene Porter, the man behind "The Man", has passed away.  In my early days at Microsoft I made many sunny afternoon drives to Dixie's to get my digestive system cauterized by his hot sauce. He liked to blare Clarence Carter on the radio.  He was a cool guy and he will be missed.