The first two paragraph of the preface of a book titled "Retirement Income Analysis""

"When one sits down to write a textbook or monograph, it is useful to create a picture of the type of reader for whom it is designed. This is relatively easy in some cases. One could, for example, write a text for the first course on Investments at the MBA level. Or a monograph designed to influence those who teach Financial Economics at the PhD level. Or possibly a book targeted at the individual investor with no formal coursework in finance. With target audience firmly in mind, the author can decide what to include or exclude, the assumed level of prior knowledge in various areas, whether to be pedantic or argumentative, controlled or vitriolic, and so on.

So – for whom have I written this book? The most honest answer is: myself. In an act of self-indulgence I have focused on a set of issues that I believe are of major social importance and a set of techniques that I believe might help society deal with them. The methods are not simple. The reader will need to focus on procedures for dealing efficiently with uncertainty by employing large sets of information about potential future outcomes. There will be mathematics and computer algorithms. But I will try to provided sufficient background en route to make the journey reasonably comfortable for those with limited backgrounds in either or both areas."

Retirement Income Analysis    (file size: about 11 MB)