From a small northwestern observatory…

I’m in Manhattan today, getting ready to deliver a pair of lectures at the Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College. For those of you not familiar, Baruch is one of ten “senior college” units within the City U. of NY system, and contains CUNY’s business school (Zicklin), the Weissman School of the Arts and Sciences, and the School of Public Affairs, along with a number of important centers and institutes. A few years ago, with a gift from alumni William Newman (founder of the REIT New Plan Excel Realty Trust), the Zichlin school embarked on developing a top-tier program in Real Estate. I was honored to be asked to serve as one of their Visiting Scholars, and every now and then I drop in to deliver a lecture or two.

In keeping with my general light-hearted tone on the podium, the title of my talk is “Cool Things I Get to Do” (although, in deference to SOME level of decorum, Baruch has titled the talk “A Conversation with Dr. John Kilpatrick”).

In general, I want to walk students (and whomever else wanders in the door) through a panoply of complex valuation challenges, ranging from Hurricane Katrina to some of the “Yucca Mountain” push-back, to the current Gulf Oil Spill mess.

I’m actually presenting two talks — today (Wednesday) I’m presenting a somewhat lighter version of the talk, limited to just the “cool” stuff. Tomorrow evening, with a talk focused more to graduate students, I’m adding some material on expert systems and some of the ways non-parametric techniques can be added to the valuation process to measure accuracy and consistency.

For more information on the talk, click here.