Question

If for some reason, an Astrophysics graduate decides to shift to Finance will he/she be in a better position (given his/her overspecialization) to make a transition compared to his/her counterparts who've been doing Analytical/Observational Astrophysics?

Answer 1

I've not made the transition myself, and it certainly depends on what aspect of finance you go into, but the answer is likely "absolutely." If you were to end up doing computational finance, I assume some of the techniques are similar.

In computational astrophysics, we often simulate a physical problem by breaking it up into discrete chunks and evolving some partial differential equations in each of those chunks. This usually done in a multidimensional framework of up to ~7 (3 space + 3 momentum + time) dimensions if you are doing radiation hydrodynamics solving the Boltzmann transport equation.

I'm a bit unfamiliar with computational finance, but I imagine you have a similar problem in that you have some differential equations telling you how each of the important variables changes with respect to your dependent variables. The problem here is likely to be similar to wanting to minimize some "energy" (read: maximize some profit) function in some very high-dimensional phase space - certainly greater than 7.

Nevertheless, their certainly exists an overlap in techniques. More importantly, the ability to think about and solve problems in the discrete manner used in computational astrophysics will certainly be applicable in areas outside of astronomy, such as finance.