In the mid-80s, Wall Street turned to the quants—brainy financial engineers—to invent new ways to boost profits.

80年代中期，华尔街求助计量经济学 ——聪明的金融工程师——以发明新的方法来增加利润。

But the quants are usually pragmatic enough to cope.

不过数量分析师的务实通常足以应付此类问题。

And quants are always tweaking their models. Mr.

交易员也会随时间调整他们的模型。

"You've got to hire quants for their coaching skills," he says.

“招聘分析师时还得考虑指导技能，”他说。

The computer-savvy traders known as quants are paying attention.

被称作股票分析员的计算机高手交易员正在注意这种趋势。

Derivatives trading got a huge boost and quants poured into the industry.

衍生品交易得到了很大的推动，该行业得到促进。

Banks hired hordes of PhD-wielding “quants” to fine-tune ever more complex risk models.

银行雇佣了一大群图有博士之表的“quants”（译者注：指从事计量金融研究者）对更为复杂的金融模型进行微调。

For a time, employing quants was trendy: it showed the firm was using science to beat the market.

聘用宽客一度成为时髦做法：它体现出公司正利用科学战胜市场。

The limit to the quants’ tinkering has been not mathematics but the speed, power and cost of computers.

数量分析师在此类修补上的局限已不是数学问题而是计算机的速度、能力与成本。

The quants can introduce sudden jumps or tweak their models to match actual share-price movements more closely.

定量分析师还可引入突然跳跃，或者对其模型进行调整以便与真实股价更相吻合。

Quants often use these programs to manage their risks by, say, automatically shutting down trading when bad news hits.

股票分析员经常使用这些程序来管理风险，比如，当坏的新闻出现时，交易自动终止。

With the advent of the “peace dividend” (read: Pentagon cuts), many of them headed for Wall Street and became “quants.”

随着“和平股息”的出现这些人大多进入了华尔街，成为数据分析员。

It would, though, be simplistic to blame the crisis solely, or even mainly, on sloppy risk managers or wild-eyed quants.

但是，把危机归咎于危机本身，甚至把主要责任推卸在碌碌无为的风险管理这和狂热激进的quants身上就显得太简单了。

But some financial experts wonder whether the quants are weakening whatever contact with reality the street may have had.

但是一些金融专家怀疑，金融工程师们是否正在弱化现实中与华尔街联系着的一切。

Over the years the "quants" have found ways to cope with this-better ways to deal with, as it were, quirks in the prices of fruit and fruit salad.

多年以来，定量分析师(“quants”)找到了应付此类问题的办法——亦即更好的处理水果与水果色拉之间的价格巧合的方法。

Thirty years ago, he says, Wall Street firms realised that some physicists could work out differential equations and recruited them to become “quants”, analysts and traders.

他记得30年前，华尔街的公司发现一些物理学家懂微分方程，于是乎招他们来，有做分析员的也有做交易员的。

Thirty years ago, he says, Wall Street firms realised that some physicists could work out differential equations and recruited them to become "quants", analysts and traders.

他记得30年前，华尔街的公司发现一些物理学家懂微分方程，于是乎招他们来，有做分析员的也有做交易员的。

Wall Street's new products are so complicated and interdependent that only the advanced number crunching of the quants can untangle the risks involved; without it, the market crushes you.

华尔街上新兴的产品是如此复杂且互相依赖，以至于只有金融工程师们先进的数据处理才可以解决涉及到的问题；没有他们 市场将把你搞垮。

For while investment bank salesmen might have treated his creations as near infallible, in truth Derman - like many brilliant scientists-turned-quants - has always recognised their flaws.

尽管投行的销售人员也许认为他的作品近乎完美，但实际上，与许多由科学家转型的杰出宽客一样，德曼始终认识到其中存在缺陷。