Pompeo Pontone is a Professional Investment Specialist and Financial Consultant with more than 25 years of experience gained in the field. As an expert in Data Science, FinTech and Private Equity, he has recently dealt with the subject of Decision Trees in Data Science.
Decision Trees explained by Pompeo Pontone
Currently working in the fields of Quantitative Finance, Derivatives Trading, FinTech, Data Science, and Private Equity, Pompeo Pontone explains why Decision Trees are so important within Data Science: "Decision trees (DTs) are among the most versatile class of machine learning algorithm", he writes, "they're particularly useful as the basic classifier and random forests which are among the most powerful class of machine learning algorithm". As pointed out by the Investment Consultant and Specialist, indeed, a decision tree is a non-parametric supervised learning algorithm used for classification and regression problems. His article underlines that the goal of Decision Trees "is to create a model that predicts the value of a target variable by learning simple decision rules inferred from the data features", expert says, adding that such methods are "capable of handling both classification and regression tasks and they're able to deal with complex nonlinear datasets". Pompeo Pontone continues his article by explaining another useful feature of Decision Trees, which are also called "white-box models", as they are easy to interpret: "This is because they're based on a hierarchy of simple classification rules which are easily visualized", he writes, and "this is an opposition to black-box models like deep neural networks. In black-box models, decisions are made in a process which is far more opaque". The Investor and Investment Specialist concludes his article by adding that "with Decision Trees, we can easily traverse the tree by eye and see the criteria for how the decisions are made".
Pompeo Pontone: current activities and past roles in the world of finance
Particularly focused on the fields of Investment Management and Capital Markets, Pompeo Pontone is a professional Investment Specialist and Financial Consultant with over 25 years of experience. After graduating with honors in Economics from the Bocconi University in Milan (1994), he obtained a Master of Science in Quantitative Finance from the Birkbeck College (University of London). His academic qualifications include as well the "Mathematical Finance: Contingent Claims Pricing in Continuous Time" Postgraduate Course (University of Florence). Currently working as an Investor and Investment Specialist with a focus in Quantitative Finance, Derivatives Trading, FinTech, Data Science, and Private Equity, Pompeo Pontone started his career as a Research Analyst at Stone & McCarthy Research Associates, which he joined in London in 1995. He then served as Fixed Income Analyst at Credito Italiano (known today as UniCredit) in Milan, and as Vice President and Senior Fund Manager at Pioneer Investments, a Dublin based firm specializing in investment funds management. After a professional experience at Intesa Asset Management (known today as Eurizon - Intesa San Paolo), which he joined as a Director - Co-Head of Credit Portfolios & Asset Management in 1999, he held the position of Managing Director - Head of Corporate Bonds & Credit Derivatives at Fineco Asset Management from 2001 to 2002. His successful career led him to undertake other significant challenges at leading international institutions, such as BMPS Bank in London, where he was Managing Director - Head of Corporate Bonds & Credit Derivatives Proprietary Trading, and ALTIAM - Amstel Securities LLP, where he was appointed Managing Director - Head of Alternative Investments and Asset Management. His last professional experience before starting his current activities was as Senior Financial Advisor at Method Investments & Advisory Ltd in 2011.
