For more information, please contact:

Stacy Formby
SciComp Inc.
(512) 451-1050 ext. 212

New Book Explores Pricing Methods for Financial Instruments

Austin - April 28, 2000 - SciComp Inc., a software synthesis company that provides pricing technology for the financial services industry, today announced the publication of the book Pricing Financial Instruments, by Domingo Tavella, Ph.D. and Curt Randall, Ph.D. Tavella is President of Octani Associates, a consulting firm specializing in risk management and financial systems design, and Randall is Vice President - Applications at SciComp.

The book, published this month by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., is the first comprehensive treatment of finite difference methods for solving the partial differential equations (PDEs) of computational finance. It provides a framework for applying such methods to the pricing of financial derivatives, explaining how numerical schemes work and how approximations affect the accuracy of solutions. The book emphasizes practical implementation issues that can dramatically affect the accuracy and efficiency of finite difference modeling codes. Reviewers have praised the book for its comprehensive and accessible treatment of the subject, and have highly recommended it for both practitioners and academic asset-pricing specialists.

Pricing Financial Instruments can be ordered online at Amazon.com or Fatbrain.com. The book can also be purchased directly from John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Also related to pricing financial instruments, Curt Randall will speak at the RISK/Courant Institute training course on "Advanced Numerical Methods for Solving PDEs to Price Derivatives," which will be held in London on May 11th and 12th and in New York on June 5th and 6th. Dr. Randall will give two talks: "Understanding Error and Stability," and "Multi-Dimensional Models" (with Rob Zvan in New York). See the RISK Publications web site for details.

About Scicomp

As the recognized leader in software synthesis, SciComp provides pricing technology to produce complex mathematical models without manual computer programming. SciFinance, the company's premier product, automates the pricing of complex derivative and option structures. The customer briefly specifies a pricing model in financial and mathematical terms using the easy-to-learn ASPEN language. Then SciFinance generates the thousands of lines of C code that implement the specification. SciFinance reduces the cost of custom software development and produces codes that often run faster and are more accurate than traditional methods.