Quant Foundation Series

Fall 2025 Dates and Times
August 23, 2025 - September 13, 2025, Saturday mornings from 8:30am to 11:00am CDT
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Topics
Combinatorics, discrete and continuous probability distributions, density functions and cumulative density functions, conditional probability and conditional expectation, the Central Limit Theorem, moment-generating functions, the Strong Law of Large Numbers, and the application of probability theory in solving quantitative interview questions.

Course Instructor
Chao-Jen Chen is a senior instructor in the MSFM program’s Quant Foundation Series and a senior teaching assistant in the MSFM program, mainly responsible for running review classes for courses including Option Pricing, Numerical Methods, and Machine Learning in Python. He used to work for one of the largest insurers in Singapore as fixed income quantitative analyst and FX manager, managing and hedging the insurer’s USD3bn FX exposure to more than 20 currencies. His recent research interest is Singapore’s monetary policy tool, i.e., the SGD NEER (Singapore Dollar Nominal Effective Exchange Rate). In April 2017, he released an app in Google Play and Apple App Store that implemented his SGD NEER model.

Chao-Jen holds a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from National Tsing Hua University and master’s degrees in Industrial Engineering from National Taiwan University and Financial Mathematics from the University of Chicago. 

Course Cost
Probability (4 weeks): US $950
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Fall 2025 Dates and Times
September 27, 2025 - October 18, 2025, Saturday mornings from 8:30am to 11:00am CDT 
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Topics 
Limits and series, differential and integral calculus in one and multiple dimensions, the Fundamental Theorem of Calculus, implicit differentiation, integration by parts, Taylor’s Theorem, convexity and Jensen’s inequality, L’Hospital’s Rule, and the application of calculus in mathematical finance.

Course Instructor
Chao-Jen Chen is a senior instructor in the MSFM program’s Quant Foundation Series and a senior teaching assistant in the MSFM program, mainly responsible for running review classes for courses including Option Pricing, Numerical Methods, and Machine Learning in Python. He used to work for one of the largest insurers in Singapore as fixed income quantitative analyst and FX manager, managing and hedging the insurer’s USD3bn FX exposure to more than 20 currencies. His recent research interest is Singapore’s monetary policy tool, i.e., the SGD NEER (Singapore Dollar Nominal Effective Exchange Rate). In April 2017, he released an app in Google Play and Apple App Store that implemented his SGD NEER model.

Chao-Jen holds a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from National Tsing Hua University and master’s degrees in Industrial Engineering from National Taiwan University and Financial Mathematics from the University of Chicago. 

Course Cost
Calculus (4 weeks): US $950
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Fall 2025 Dates and Times
November 1, 2025 - December 20, 2025, Saturday mornings from 8:30am to 11:00am CST (CDT only for November 1, 2025) 
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Topics
Vectors and matrices, systems of linear equations, LU decomposition, inner product and cosine similarity, the Fundamental Theorem of Linear Algebra, vector spaces and subspaces, eigenvalues and eigenvectors, spectral decomposition, diagonalization, orthogonality and orthogonalization, QR decomposition, projection and linear regression, determinants, positive-definite matrices and covariance matrices, Cholesky decomposition, Singular Value Decomposition, Principal Component Analysis, and the application of linear algebra in finance, AI, and data science. Python is used in this module to illustrate Linear Algebra concepts, and students will need to use Python to solve some homework problems. Prior knowledge of Python is not a prerequisite; introductory materials will be provided.

Course Instructor
Chao-Jen Chen is a senior instructor in the MSFM program’s Quant Foundation Series and a senior teaching assistant in the MSFM program, mainly responsible for running review classes for courses including Option Pricing, Numerical Methods, and Machine Learning in Python. He used to work for one of the largest insurers in Singapore as fixed income quantitative analyst and FX manager, managing and hedging the insurer’s USD3bn FX exposure to more than 20 currencies. His recent research interest is Singapore’s monetary policy tool, i.e., the SGD NEER (Singapore Dollar Nominal Effective Exchange Rate). In April 2017, he released an app in Google Play and Apple App Store that implemented his SGD NEER model.

Chao-Jen holds a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from National Tsing Hua University and master’s degrees in Industrial Engineering from National Taiwan University and Financial Mathematics from the University of Chicago. 

Course Cost
Linear Algebra (8 weeks): US $1900
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Fall 2025 Dates and Times
November 23, 2025 - December 14, 2025, Sunday evenings from 4:00pm to 7:00pm CST
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Topics
Data Analysis and Regression aims to teach some of the fundamental building blocks needed to successfully understand, analyze, and derive meaning from various datasets. The course kicks off with introducing the bias-variance tradeoff, setting the stage for thoughtful model building. The course then dives deep into linear regression, where we will learn the derivation for it, the assumptions behind it, and how we can do inference with it. We then move on to various flavors of linear regression: robust regression techniques, ridge, LASSO, etc. Next, we explore issues that are unique to time series data and models around them. Finally, we conclude the course with an overview of various other models and algorithms: PCA, trees, forests, boosting/bagging, and clustering.

Course Instructor
Tobias Rodriguez del Pozo is a 2023 American Aregentian graduate of the Financial Mathematics program. Previously, Tobias graduated from the University of Edinburgh in 2022 with a degree in Computer Science. Tobias interned at a variety of financial services companies (insurance, trading, and a dark pool), and is currently working as a Quantitative Researcher at a market maker. He enjoys photography, running, and learning new Python tricks.

Course Cost
Data Analysis and Regression (4 weeks): US $950
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Fall 2025 Dates and Times
December 3, 11, 15, and 17, 2025 evenings from 6:00pm to 8:30pm CST
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Topics: The Markets course is a non-credit course intended to give students a tour of key financial products, markets, and practices. It is a pre-requisite for FINM 36700 and a highly recommended (non-credit) course for the Financial Math program. The course materials are found at the online book, including the assignments and data.

Course Instructor
Mark Hendricks is the Director of the Financial Mathematics program and an Associate Senior Instructional Professor in the Department of Mathematics. His industry experience includes hedge funds, trading firms, asset managers, and private equity. Mark's roles have included quantitative research, systematic trading, and risk management. 

Mark has taught courses, reviews, and workshops at the graduate level for UChicago's Financial Math, Booth School of Business, Applied Data Science Program, and Department of Economics. His courses include portfolio and risk management, fixed income derivatives, asset pricing, valuation, and data analysis. Mark’s teaching style emphasizes active learning with application and data.

As a Ph.D. candidate for Financial Economics at the University of Chicago’s Booth School and Department of Economics, Mark won awards including a Stevanovich Fellowship and Lee Prize. Mark holds an M.A. in Economics and a B.S. in Mathematics.

Course Cost
Financial Markets (4 lectures): US $950
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