What's the difference between Mathematical Finance and Financial Engineering?

[kevin]

What's the difference between Mathematical Finance and Finan

Quote from widipedia:

In terms of practice, Mathematical finance also overlaps heavily with the fields of financial engineering and computational finance. Arguably, all three are largely synonymous, although the latter two focus on application, while the former focuses on modelling and derivation;

more ideas(arguments) on this?

 

[Bridgett]

Now my question is: what is the difference between Mathematical finance and Applied Mathematics for Finance?
Can we say AMF also focuses on application like financial engineering and computational finance do? Or, should we just switch our name like what Professor Stefanica has suggested?

 

[RussianMike]

In practical terms most programs similar to ours (I say similar since all math finance programs are actually unique for various reasons) call it a degree in Financial Engineering. When I was trying to explain to people (industry people) that I was doing a program in applied mathematics in finance they sort of knew what it was but not exactly. When you say financial engineering most people will know what you're talking about. In my opinion financial engineering involves solving complex problems in finance(i'll use pricing) that require you to break the problem down into smaller parts. So we price a derivative as a similar security (or similar enough) which is a problem in and of itself. We break the derivative into smaller parts and the put them back together. Financial engineering involves all of this. Financial math or the math of finance is what we use to engineer. The assumption is that people who enter a financial engineering program are by nature curious individuals who like solving creative problems. The problems that we are solving in our program are financial math problems(eventually). For the first semester we learn more math and finance and some apllications of the finance math.