Physics and Finance

Physics and Finance introduces physics students to concepts and methods of finance. Despite being perceived as quite distant from physics, finance shares a number of common methods and ideas, usually related to noise and uncertainties. Juxtaposing the key methods to applications in both physics and finance articulates both differences and common features, this gives students a deeper understanding of the underlying ideas. This helps readers acquire a number of useful mathematical and computational tools, such as stochastic differential equations, path integrals, Monte-Carlo methods, and basic cryptology. Each chapter ends with a set of carefully designed exercises enabling readers to test their comprehension.

MATLAB is used throughout the book and the solutions from chapter excercises are available for download including several MATLAB Live Scripts.