The World In and Around Us

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson - Using Machine Learning to extract topics from a 650 page book.

[This post is continuously updated since I just bought it last night from feedbooks...]

The goal is to allow me to get a quick overview of this 650 page book and figure out where to read (since I know the Steve Jobs story pretty well and I'm more interested in some of the key short stories that I didn't know already).

This is the first try. Haven't used any external data. Didn't model the correlation among topics and changes over time. Software ran for about 1M iterations.

Me: @kinwong
Design Advisor: @inasee
Technical Advisor: @seannyg

0 pixar disney katzenberg
1 baez young egan
2 gass share unix
3 raskin project jef
4 lasseter smith software
5 blue box dylan
6 brother levy hawaii
7 ipod fadell music
8 intensity drop vegetarian
9 perspective objects emotionally
10 einstein heroes ceo
11 music itunes ipod
12 board ceo financial
13 apple company product
14 phone touch glass
15 devices cloud hub
16 sculley macintosh division
17 paul education electronic
18 gates microsoft windows
19 disk frogdesign susan
20 atari alcorn bushnell
21 dylan bono ipod
22 truth campbell levitt
23 markkula ii mike
24 flew release rights
25 costs struck casual
26 macintosh ibm ad
27 coleman players stand
28 macintosh hertzfeld mac
29 reed father erin
30 options stock price
31 kottke friedland zen
32 hewlett book packard
33 sculley pepsi marketing
34 express interfaces intensity
35 suit perfection leaving
36 powell cancer health
37 iger eisner deal
38 intel sec grant
39 wozniak woz personal
40 father school electronics
41 college lsd campus
42 romantic attention condition
43 laser mr ideas
44 ipad digital apps
45 ad commercial ads
46 imac drive tray
47 computer computers show
48 google iphone android
49 murdoch books dinner
50 parents joanne paul
51 amelio woolard ellison
52 lawsuit smartphones steel
53 filter trait maintain
54 eason information hormone
55 powell laurene smith
56 mountain boy pot
57 lisa father simpson
58 jobs steve time
59 raise childhood assistant
60 wayne hp keyboard
61 perot rand lewin
62 stores store johnson
63 rounded fonts bauhaus
64 hurt carrot fasts
65 cancer cook rubinstein
66 people make made
67 debi paris france
68 house found family
69 software products system
70 crowd feet thrown
71 reality distortion field
72 design products simplicity
73 lisa sony drive
74 palo alto wife
75 metal semiconductor feet
76 cook airplane players
77 xerox atkinson parc
78 ive product jony
79 brennan relationship calhoun
80 clow crazy licensing
81 public ipo shares
82 audience onstage appeared

Digital Media 101 for Writers - What you can do in the next 60 minutes

(I wrote this post for my author friends)

Why you should care?

Your online presence is a long-term asset that stays with you even when you move across jobs, projects, companies, and books. It accumulates over time.
Building a passionate community allows you guarantee sales of your book, build up future pre-orders, and have the opportunity to mobilize your community for meaningful purpose. (I'm also writing a post with examples of authors who are leveraging their community for the greater good)

What you can do in the next 60 minutes:

This becomes your permanent space online. Make sure that people can subscribe to your blog via RSS and comment on it.
(Optional) Get a domain name with your name (e.g. blog.rickykinwong.com).
(Optional) Integrate it with disqus commenting system. See the posts on my blog as an example.

Signup for Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn

(Optional) Use Tweetdeck or Seesmic to follow your friends.
Post interesting short content on twitter/facebook/linkedin “updates”. Occasionally post updates to link back to your blog to buildup your “space”.

Subscribe to popular blogs/sites in your topic with a rss news reader.

Recommended: Google Reader
Search for other blogs in your topic - Google Blogsearch or Technorati

Write posts that are designed to be shared and link generously to other bloggers so hopefully that they would link you back.

You can start by linking to this post here :-) http://blog.rickykinwong.com/2011/02/digital-media-101-for-writers-what-you.html

Seth Godin's Domino Project

What is the future of books? It's a big question with big and bigger conferences and I plan to talk more about it in future posts. But this one is about Seth Godin's Domino Project. Seth Godin said that he has given up on publishing, but looks like he is becoming a publisher himself with the Domino?

My understanding is that he is trying to get folks who already have a small audience, help them self-publish books that are shorter, and then allow small scale, personal gifting to tap into word of mouth to grow it into a big audience.

Would it work? Can we find the right balance for a book that is short enough that a lot of people would read it and long enough that people would want to pay for it? This could all be speculative because I've never met Seth Godin and don't have any private information about the Domino Project.

It isn't the first time folks try to create shorter content (the Economist sells a bunch and TED is trying to do the same with TEDBooks). What's new here is that in the ebooks world, the incremental cost of "printing" a book is essentially zero and we can let readers gift additional copies cheaply, as long as the "gifter" doesn't gift it to people who would've bought the book in the first place (i.e. you don't want to eat into your own sales). I suppose that's where the concept of tribes comes in. We need a way to differentiate the original book from the one you get as a gift. e.g. a special, collectible edition of the book for true fan and basic electronic version that you can give out for free or at a discount. It's not a leap of faith. Musicians have experience doing this already. The Grateful Death lets tapers share personal (i.e. low quality) concert recordings and so does Lady Gaga.

My minor disagreement is that I think the future is bright for traditional publishers too. If Seth's venture does well, traditional publishers can figure out which "short" book takes off and help the author expand those into a full book.

MobNotate - Very Early Alpha Version

The last two weeks I had some time to push out an early alpha of mobnotate. You can find it at www.mobnotate.com. Basically, you email us any html webpage at post@mobnotate.com and we will reply you with a link to your document/ebook hosted for free with added features such as reader annotation capability and integration with Facebook (e.g. any contribution by anyone will get broadcast to their wall if they're logged in).

This is a very very small part of what I want to accomplish with ebooks (which is a much bigger vision and involves more with mobile phones and tablets). The goal of this web version is to find out if we can use social media to help authors enrich content and increase the engagement from the readers. My success metric is to help writers (that's you!!) to get 10X more readers or 10X more engagement :-)

Current feature list (suggestions appreciated!!)

Email a html webpage attachment to post@mobnotate.com and we will reply with a link. That means you can use any offline editor you want and just export it to html before emailing us.
Click in the doc anywhere to contribute content. Paste a link to an image or youtube video in the comment box to automatically embed multimedia.
If a user is connected to Facebook, any comment he/she makes will show up in their Facebook wall so that your book/document would get some viral marketing benefit. This also makes your content more social and personal.
A "Top contributors" ranking on the right to encourage participation from your readers.

Some sample documents,

Art of War - Sun Tzu
Alice in the Wonderland
FCIC Report (fresh off the press!!):

If you're a reader, try reading some of the ebooks above and help enrich the content. Or if you have original content yourself (either you wrote or is in the public domain), email it to post@mobnotate.com as an attachment and share the reply link with your readers to jumpstart the community. Feel free to email me anytime if you have any suggestions and ideas. By the way, if you have content that you expect to get a lot of readers let me know so I could try to prepare for it first :-)

The INSEAD Experience

What is the INSEAD Experience? What would still be the same if INSEAD isn't a business school (e.g. if INSEAD is a Public Policy school)? Over the last few weeks I got to meet students from other business schools and I realized how different the "INSEAD Experience" is. Here is my list on what creates the unique INSEAD experience:

1. Global

• Truly global education. 2 full-scale campuses plus locations in other regions. If most big institutions are international these days shouldn't your school be too?

• Broad international alumni base. Your network will automatically become much wider. Rather than duplicating your existing (and most likely concentrated) network, INSEAD naturally compliments it.

• European and Asian perspectives. Europe has a bigger GDP than the US, and Asia is of course a very exciting region to be in. Having exposures to cases, visitors, and classmates from these regions will differentiate you.

2. Intense, One Year Program. People here are self-selected to work-hard play-harder. You know your future INSEAD colleagues have the ability to organize their lives and the physical endurance that you can count on at critical moments :-)

3. 3rd Language Requirement. Did you always wanted to learn French or Chinese? I have classmates who went from zero to be quite conversant in a year. You just have to be persistent (see #2).

4. Big and Intimate at the same time. Usually you either have to pick a bigger program or a smaller intimate one. INSEAD graduates the most MBAs each year among the top schools and certainly gives you space to network. At the same time, because of the dual-campus, dual-promotion system, you could also create an intimate program that is the smallest among the top schools. Depends how you structure it, INSEAD could be a school with 900+ students or 200. In fact, most people choose both. Why not enjoy a big chateau party one night and an intimate coffee chat the next?

5. Older Demographics. The average age is 29 means that your classmates are already bringing in certain amount of perspective and network.

6. Entrepreneurial and Independent. INSEAD stands alone as a private independent institution that isn't part of a bigger university system. This gives us certain flexibility to be innovative (e.g. dual campus system). We could move quicker and be more responsive to our "customers" because we manage our own finances and don't really have the luxury to be arrogant. The INSEAD idea itself was a startup and we don't just pay lip service to entrepreneurship.

What does 51K Euro buy you?

Even taking into account that it is an one year program INSEAD is not cheap. Once a while though you realize you are getting a good deal on your tuition.

The other day my section got a bonus lecture from Nikos Vettas on Greece and the Euro. Nikos is a super star Greek economist and is advising their government at this very critical time. One topic came up was how you can have a coordinated monetary policy when you don't have a coordinated fiscal policy. My personal feeling is that any talk of a Euro breakup is exaggerated and the monetary policy in the EU will stay quite loose for the time being.

In the words, INSEAD's tuition might get cheaper after all.

MBA Groups

When I tell people that I'm in one of those bigger groups most people become very concern about my well-being. "Are you okay?", "Oh it is going to be tough trying to get consensus", and even "Some groups get physical you know...like fist fights". No fist fights so far :)

What I like about my group is that we are all so different.

A Peruvian Lawyer/Banker who has worked and lived in the US and South America.
A young management consultant/project manager/Private Equity lady from HK with experience from China to Southeast Asia.
A senior Swedish manager with extensive experience in online startups all over Europe.
A female Serbian/British Entrepreneur/CEO/Sales/Business Development with experience from Europe to Emerging Market.
An Indian CFA analyst and auditor with an IQ higher than you and I combined, and
Me

But there's more common among us than you think -- other than we are all super smart, driven, and extremely good looking -- we are all global. We all have experience living or working in a new culture as a foreigner and trying to find our way around a new environment.

Photography - Composition

Composition is one of the most important ways to improve your pictures. My class that shows a few common techniques:

Introduction Class: http://blog.rickykinwong.com/2009/03/digital-photography-class-lecture-1.html

Investing ETF/Index with leverage: Which is a better deal -- LEAP Options or Margin loans?

The primary ways to get leverage are 1) futures, 2) margin, and 3) options. A quick search makes me realize that futures contracts have high tax rate (23%) compare to LEAP. The guy at IndexRoll (who advocates LEAP) even published a book that covers all the sources of leverage, which I think is a good general introduction. There's one problem -- he left out the issue of taxes. The same person appears to had a debate on a forum over margin loans vs LEAPs, but they didn't get into the specifics on the topic of taxes and just leave it as "depends". Here I give you some hard numbers to figure it out and it appears that margin is a better deal.

Margin vs LEAPs:

Benefits of LEAP:

Long-term capital gain tax after a year (instead of short-term).
No margin calls.
Fixed interest rate (for one year before the next "roll").
No capital gain if cash exercise.

Benefits of Margin:

Lower interest rate (because of tax efficiency and historically yield curve goes up).
Long-term capital gain tax ONLY in the final year.

Numbers showing margin is a better deal:

If you assume these (very reasonable) variables below it appears that margin is a better deal. After five years the difference of the two is 3.8%, after 10 years it's 6.17%, and after 20 years it's 11.56%.

Margin Rate: 6.50%

Margin rate depends on many variables (size of loan, broker, and possibly collateral). Go here for your personal margin rate IB, etrade, vanguard, and schwarb.

LEAP Interest Rate 3.00%

This depends on a lot of elements (e.g. interest rate and volatility), but you can check the rate for SPY here.

Dividend 1.74%
Growth 8.50%
Marginal Tax 28.00%
Cap-Gain 15.00%

Here is the spreadsheet that shows year by year details.

Problem with margins:The primary problem with margin are 1) Margin call risk, 2) variable interest rate, and 3) only investment income can deduct with margin interest (in the US).

For #3 the amount of maximum leverage you can get and still keep the full benefit of tax deduction is about 1.37X. More precisely it should follow this relationship,

L = M / (M - D), and 6.5 / (6.5 - 1.74) = 1.37

In reality you probably won't get leverage "much" higher than that so problem #1 and #3 balances each other out. If you want higher leverage though it's true that the value of margin decreases, and you need to run the numbers for your personal scenario to come to a conclusion.

At 1.3X leverage you can sustain 47% loss before a margin call (assume 30% maintenance margin). You'll have to decide if you can find additional funding before your position loses that much value.

The problem of variable interest rate risk is a valid one. You'll have to decide if that is a risk you want to take or hedge it some other way.

Other sources of leverage:

There're other ways of getting leverage like leveraged funds or credit cards. The problem with leveraged funds is well documented.

Digital Photography Class: Lecture #1

I started teaching a Digital Photography class with Citizen Schools. My students are 6-7th graders from a middle school in Redwood City. Class is every Wednesday 4-6PM. Let me know if anyone wants to co-teach it :-)

Slides for 1st lecture:

Also see the handout.

Composition Class: http://blog.rickykinwong.com/2009/10/photography-composition.html

Exotic (Disgusting) Food -- A matter of perspective?

I had dinner with a group of tourists from Switzerland last night. Many people have heard of exotic foods from China so I took this opportunity to ask my new friends about their food experience in Beijing. To my surprise I learn that they have already seen pig ears, pig stomach, duck feet's, cow heads, pig brains, jellyfish, and many other foods that will give pause to foreigners.

My new friends were understandably disgusted. Even I myself haven't tried some of the foods that they have seen. But it got me thinking. If a Chinese tourist goes to Europe or America what would he think about the food there? (here is a good summary) Perhaps a conversation like this will take place in the future between two Chinese students in Beijing.

Chinese student A: Hey dude, check out what I got from my backpacking trip.
Chinese student B: What's that...
Chinese student A: Goose Liver.
Chinese student B: That's cool.
Chinese student A: It's a western delicacy.
Chinese student B: I see...Hey, what's that other thing?
Chinese student A: This is deer testicle.
Chinese student B: Ahh. I didn't know you're into these things...
Chinese student A: It's a western exotic food, jackass.
Chinese student B: and what's that?
Chinese student A: Bull balls.
Chinese student B: They actually let you into the border with this stuff? (maybe I should talk to the fraternity brothers about this...)
Chinese student A: Check this out. This is called blue cheese. The Europeans like to leave it outside the fridge because it needs to be alive.
Chinese student B: Holy crap! What's that smell? Your socks?
Chinese student A: It's suppose to be alive. Alive!
Chinese student B: Get that out of the house right now. This smell is lethal!

Some Chinese tourists will be open minded, but some would not be so open minded. Tourism is one of the best ways for two countries to understand each other at a direct, human level. There will be misunderstandings during the first visit, but I'm sure if these Chinese students travel to America few more times they would understand that some of these exotic foods are just not eaten by majority of the population, and might even come to enjoy some of them.

Next year after Beijing Olympics you will hear stories about strange Chinese foods from people who just come back from the game. You will see pictures of pig ears on Flickr or watch dangerous Chinese highway driving on YouTube. It's natural to highlight what is different when visiting a new country. Just hope that it will only be the first of many visits by both sides.

Chinese Poetry and Chinese Language

My late grandmother, who was an educator in Hong Kong and China, used to write a poem for each of her new born grandchild. This is the one she wrote for me. 王观 was the original author.

   水是眼波横，
    山是眉峰聚。
    欲问行人去那边？　
    眉眼盈盈处。

    才始送春归，
    又送君归去。
    若到江南赶上春，
    千万和春住。
                   ——宋•王观《送鲍浩然之浙东》

Poetry can be very concise, and Chinese poetry's are especially so. For example, below is the original Chinese poem for Mulan, which Disney made into a movie.

唧唧復唧唧
木蘭當戶織
不聞機杼聲
唯聞女嘆息

問女何所思
問女何所憶
女亦無所思
女亦無所憶

昨夜見軍帖
可汗大點兵
軍書十二卷
卷卷有爺名

阿爺無大兒
木蘭無長兄
愿為市鞍馬
從此替爺征

東市買駿馬
西市買鞍韉
南市買轡頭
北市買長鞭

朝辭爺娘去
暮宿黃河邊
不聞爺娘喚女聲
但聞黃河流水鳴濺濺

旦辭黃河去
暮至黑山頭
不聞爺娘喚女聲
但聞燕山胡騎聲啾啾

萬里赴戎機
關山度若飛
朔氣傳金柝
寒光照鐵衣

將軍百戰死
壯士十年歸
歸來見天子
天子坐明堂

策勛十二轉
賞賜百千強
可汗問所欲
“木蘭不用尚書郎
愿借明駝千里足
送兒還故鄉”

爺娘聞女來
出郭相扶將
阿姊聞妹來
當戶理紅妝

小弟聞姊來
磨刀霍霍向豬羊
"開我東閣門
坐我西閣床

脫我戰時袍
著我舊時裳."
當窗理云鬢
對鏡貼花黃

出門看火伴
火伴皆驚惶
同行十二年
不知木蘭是女郎

“雄兔腳扑朔
雌兔眼迷離
兩兔傍地，
安能辨我是雄雌?”

The beauty (or challenge, depends on who you ask) is that individual character in Chinese has limited meaning. A chinese character is similar to a letter in english. The letter "t" has limited meaning by itself. It's the combinations of characters where ideas are formed. For example, the letters "t", "e", and "a" individually aren't too useful, but the combination "tea" has a much more tangible definition. The Chinese language has more than 85,000 characters, which in theory allows it to create more combinations than the 26 letter alphabet system. This is perfect for peotry where you want to describe a concept with less words.

Here is the original Mulan poem side by side with the english translation. Notice how the english version uses many more letters than of Chinese characters. Also Chinese characters are much more complex than english letters. Something must give if you want to cram 85,000 possible combination of symbols into the same square box.

Dentist Tools

Every time when I think that my teeth is clean my dentist will clean out all the plaque I don't realize. I'm excited that now I have my own dental mirror I can be more "proactive" in my brushing.

Miniature Golf

Sometimes I wonder why even the most complicated miniature golf setup in theory all you have to do is hit a straight line. Then I realize how hard it is to hit a perfect straight line.

The Dollar and the Pound

Just as I'm preparing my trip to Britain the US Dollar fell to a 26-year low against the pound. At the same time the Bank of England reported a 3.1% inflation (1% higher than the target 2%). That means my dollar can buy less pounds, and my pounds can buy less fish and chips. Is this a gentlemanly way to treat your guest?

How much is 1.5 hours worth to you?

I was trying to buy a ticket to Boston today and I could either take the 7AM flight and arrive at 7:53PM or take the 8:25AM flight and still arrive at 7:53PM but at an extra $10 cost. This is equivalent to 85 minutes for $10 or $7.06 an hour compensation for being in the airport. How much would you need to get paid to spend an hour in the airport?

Developments in Hong Kong -- 10 Years After Reunification with China

A decade after reunification with China, perhaps now is a good time to take a look back. In the past 10 years, Hong Kong has survived the busting of a bubble, the 1997 Asia financial crisis, a US recession, SARS, and now finally on the road to recovery again (Here is a graph that shows how dramatic the flutuations were). To put it mildly, it was an eventful decade. It also highlights the adaptability of the Hong Kong people. I was in the city this month, and here are 12 visible developments in HK.

The emphasis of the list are things that are observable by everyday local Hong Kong residents. This list is not ordered in any particular way. There're 12 items here because that's how many I found. So what you're seeing is completely raw and without any filtering on my part. You will see from the smallest streetside developments to broader social change. So without further delay:

Octopus Card

Launched in 1997, the Octopus Card is a rechargeable contactless smart card that is accepted at all major transportations, convience stores, vending machines, and fastfood chains. It is used by 95% of the local population. You can even link your bank account to your Octopus Card for automatic recharge. This essentially make Hong Kong the closest cashless society in the world today. It is entirely possible to live off your Octopus Card.

Based on my highly non-scientific oberservation, the average Octopus Card maintains a balance of rougly 70-80HKD (10USD). I also estimate that the Octopus Card has speedup lines in bus stops by 2x.

Environmental Awareness

pollution

environment

conservation awareness

Herbal Tea

Japan

HKID

Hong Kong Identity Card

over 50% ownership

Buses

International Finance Centre

IFC

Union Square

Moving Street Markets Off the Street

Mobile Phones

Eletronic Coupon Machines

Street Light Machines

Integration with Mainland China

integration

References:

Japan -- A travel guide for the common people.

I was in Japan for the first time ever over New Year. Now I don't speak Japanese. I've also heard stories about how expensive Japan is. So if you're in a similar situation here are somethings that might be useful to you.

The good news is that although people in Japan don't speak English they can read English fairly well. There was this one time we were in a restaurant and we wanted to order beef. I first tried drawing (with no luck), then writing the word 'beef' (with some success). They finally understand us when I wrote the word 'cow'. Unfortunately, after going through all that they told us that they don't serve beef... The lesson is that English words are okay, but no pictionary. (Note: You can also try writing in Chinese.)

A lot of restaurants have plastic food displays outside. Another strategy that I discovered is to take a picture before going inside, and then point at the dish on my camera's LCD screen when ordering food. Basically I can make my own picture menu.

Even if the above two strategies don't work, there's still one way. In Japan there's vending machine in almost every block of every street. You can find a lot of them in Tokyo, and also sometimes in the middle of nowhere. The vending machines sell everything. I saw vending machines that sell hot coffee, beer, cigarettes, and even ramen.

As for saving money, get a JR Pass. You get unlimited rides on the JR with this pass. I believe you can order one before you land in Japan.

The second good news is that Japan isn't that expensive anymore. Due to long period of deflation the prices in Japan has come down to within range of other major international cities. That is not to say that you can't spend a lot of money in Tokyo because you can still do that. (Click on the picture to find out how much this noodle costs me.)

References:
Here are some things that you can do on a low budget,
http://www.pingmag.jp/2006/01/13/10-things-to-do-for-free/
http://www.tokyoessentials.com/free.html
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/nearest.aspx?country_id=104&x=2&y=10

My Japan Pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/rickwong/JapanTokyoMeijiShrine
http://picasaweb.google.com/rickwong/JapanTokyo2
http://picasaweb.google.com/rickwong/JapanRyokan
http://picasaweb.google.com/rickwong/JapanKyoto
http://picasaweb.google.com/rickwong/JapanKoyasan
http://picasaweb.google.com/rickwong/JapanTokyoYoyogiPark
http://picasaweb.google.com/rickwong/Tokyo1

Picture album from Linus (not only is he much better at taking pictures than me, he also speaks some Japanese and brought a phrase book with him, which saved us many times):
http://picasaweb.google.com/ldwong

Tony Chang blogs about his Japan experience:
http://idealisms.livejournal.com/240397.html

Hyderabad, India -- The Old and New.

I was in India last month for work. Since it was my first time in India I tried to learn as much about the country as I can. So I did what any respectable blogger would do the first thing they land in a new country: I watched the local pop-music TV channel :)

Without question pop-culture in India has traces of western influence, and yet India has maintained a lot of it's traditional culture. For example it's common to see a large group dancing in synchrony (whereas pop music in the United States tends to emphasize individualism). Traditional Indian clothing is also everywhere, not just in music videos, but also out in the streets, and in the workplace. The result is an interesting blend of east and west.

(One a side note, for a good Bollywood movie I recommend the original Sholay with Amitabh Bachchan.)

The blending of east and west extends beyond music. McDonald's spicy chicken curry burger and Domino renaming buffalo wings to chicken wings are both excellent examples.

Buffalo means "dark cow" in India, and cows are considered as religious. They're respected, and aren't part of the diet. Renaming Buffalo Wings to chicken wings avoids any misunderstanding.

Of course there're things that at first seem odd to me. Most tourist destinations have different prices for "Indians" and "Non Indians". Using pricing structures to charge different prices for different groups is not new (e.g. discount movie tickets for students and seniors), but having a sign that reads Indians vs Non-Indians is rather blunt. Local people I've met are generally nice to foreigners, and the prices definitely don't reflect any animosity towards tourists. The tourism industry can use some better marketing writing though.

Gate to the 400 year old Charminar, Hyderabad.

Gate to the 4 year old hi-tech city. Also in Hyderabad.

So you want to take the CFA Exam?

A few people have asked me about how to study for the CFA Exam. Here is my list in hindsight.

1) Official books.
You should at least read the ethics part of the book. This part of the book is also on the CFA website in a pdf file, but I would get the books in physical form for reference just in case. You might need them in level 2 and level 3.

2) Schweser notes. Get them. I have no experience with Stalla's study notes.

3) Schweser Audio CDs.
If you spend 25 minutes commuting each day, 5 days a week, that's 1.5 hours of extra studying you're getting. Given that you probably have to spend 10 hours studying each week, so either you get some of it out of your commute or you get it out of your free time. Your choice.

4) Schweser Practice Exams.
The scheweser notes already give you 3, but this set is different. They are also slightly harder than the real exams. There's also a free CFA assessment exam on their website. I took about 4-5 schweser exams total.

5) CFA official practice online exam. I only took one, but it doesn't hurt to take more.

6) Sign up for a CFA prep class.
There're 2 reasons for doing this: 1) a class puts you into a structured study schedule. You will know just by going to class that you're behind or ahead, and exactly how many sections of the book you have to read to catchup. You don't want to be in a situation where you're 2 weeks before the exam and then realize that you're only half way done with the books. 2) You get to meet other students in the class. Unless you know everything about every aspect of finance, you will probably learn something from other students. If nothing else, there's always the professional networking aspect...

My class was offered by the local analyst society (sasf.org), and if you don't have a local society, both Stalla and Scheweser also have courses that you can take. I don't have experience with their classes, but if I have to choose I probably would pick Stalla's class just to get a feel of the style between Stalla and Scheweser. You can also match the study notes with the prep class if you want.

7) Find a study group, or even better form one.
I found mine from a free service offered by sasf.org. You can also find other people on www.analystforum.com. How intense of a group is completely a matter of style, some people prefer a regular weekly group, and others just want a loosely connected online group.

8) Use the HP 12C Platinum calculator.
The TI calculator is easier to use, but the HP one is better once you get used to it. I would get the HP one because you're going to take level 2 and level 3 anyway so might as well put in the effort now. If you're getting the HP 12C, make sure you get the Platinum model. This newer model is much faster when you're doing intensive calculations (e.g. IRR).

9) Start EARLY! You can do it.
I'm not from a finance background so I had to spend total about 200-300 hours. Look, we're all busy, driven people, and you're going to make some time sacrifices, but you can make the smart ones. Hopefully this list helps you do just that.

Ricky Wong

Hey there!!

You can call me Ricky. I'm a technologist, business person, and a student of life. This blog documents my observations and discoveries. I worked at Google, studied at INSEAD and UCSB, and have lived in France, Hong Kong, California, and Singapore. My passion is in building (hopefully useful) things. You can find me on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Please don't feel alienated because of this "global digital native" persona. I actually prefer talking to people directly. Oh, btw, "Kin" is my cantonese name. This is how you write it "键". I can tell you what it means next time we meet.

Nice to meet you too :-)