The Billionaire Mathematician 96
An anonymous reader writes Dr. James Simons received his doctorate at the age of 23. He was breaking codes for the NSA at 26, and was put in charge of Stony Brook University's math department at 30. He received the Veblen Prize in Geometry in 1976. Today, he's a multi-billionaire, using his fortune to set up educational foundations for math and science. "His passion, however, is basic research — the risky, freewheeling type. He recently financed new telescopes in the Chilean Andes that will look for faint ripples of light from the Big Bang, the theorized birth of the universe. The afternoon of the interview, he planned to speak to Stanford physicists eager to detect the axion, a ghostly particle thought to permeate the cosmos but long stuck in theoretical limbo. Their endeavor 'could be very exciting,' he said, his mood palpable, like that of a kid in a candy store." Dr. Simons is quick to say this his persistence, more than his intelligence, is key to his success: "I wasn't the fastest guy in the world. I wouldn't have done well in an Olympiad or a math contest. But I like to ponder. And pondering things, just sort of thinking about it and thinking about it, turns out to be a pretty good approach."
education (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:education (Score:4, Funny)
This is why I tell people to stay in school. Even if you're smarter than most, you have a lot to learn.
Nah, man. Bill Gates dropped out and he's richer than this guy.
Drop out. You'll make more money.
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" Very useful! "
- Mr. McAfee and friends
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Please don't. I work at a university and the last thing we need is more untalented/uninterested twits doing it for the money.
Thank you.
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Mod parent up. We need fewer students in university, not more. You really should only go to university if you're passionate about some subject and want to learn more about it, but that's not why most students are there.
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Besides, if we can't saddle a bunch of dummies with debt early on, this whole national socialist experiment we got going on is gonna get rough.
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National socialist?
You keep using that word, I don't think it means what you think it means
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Small "n" national, dimwit. If he meant to say what you're accusing of him of saying, he would have put "Nazi" instead, which very obviously doesn't fit in the context.
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We need fewer students in university, not more.
Perhaps, if you one day you find yourself teaching a bunch of uninterested twits as a non union, non tenured contractor, you might wanna throw that into the equation.
Perhaps, unless you are the mentioned person of the parent post, who is a teacher, a non-union, and a non-tenured, you should not want fewer students. Why? Think about it. If there are not many students, why do they need to hire more adjunct/instructors for when they already have enough tenured? Even though the money from tuition does not make as much profit as research grants, it does provide steady revenue to the school. Also, the larger the student body, the more tuition they earn. If the number of stud
National Museum of Mathematics (Score:5, Interesting)
FTA [nytimes.com]
Nearby, on Madison Square Park, is the National Museum of Mathematics, or MoMath [momath.org], an educational center he helped finance. It opened in 2012 and has had a quarter million visitors.
Amazing, 250k visitors to a math museum? Who knew?
Simons Foundation - MoMath [simonsfoundation.org]
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I went there with my son who was 3 at the time as well as my wife. It was fun and they had some neat things. Some of the exhibits were clearer than others. The light-floor, for example, was great for kids to entertain themselves on, but actually figuring out what was going on could be tricky, even if you read the description. (This is because it cycled through a number of algorithms.)
grigori perelman and this guy walk into a bar (Score:5, Interesting)
james says "Hi Grigori, i have a billion dollars"
grigori says. "i am not interested in money"
james says "I graduated top honors, went to many three letter acronyms, and started a mega-company"
grigori says "i am not interested in fame"
james says "i am kind of a big deal. i have been featured in books and now on slashdot"
grigori says "i wouldnt want to be like an animal in a zoo, on display"
james says "i have given millions to charities, all kinds of charities, to encourage STEM"..
grigori says "You are disturbing me. I am picking mushrooms,"
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james says "what about you?"
grigori says "I declined a Fields Medal...#badass"
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james says "i am kind of a big deal. i have been featured in books and now on slashdot"
I don't think he says that at all. From the article: "He’s an individual of enormous talent and accomplishment, yet he’s completely unpretentious". Thats backed up when they say how he realized his weaknesses and sought out people to complement them with astonishing levels of success. Your post may just be pointing out the contrast between the two personality types but it comes off as ragging on Simons for accepting success and lionizing Perelman for holding true to his unconventional conviction
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Relax, dude.
And invest in some personal hygiene. Just because you're a genius recluse doesn't mean you have to look like one.
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Being a quant in the early years. (Score:5, Interesting)
His fund has an impressive trading record. He had the big advantage of starting early, in 1982, when almost nobody was doing automated trading or using advanced statistical methods. Their best years were 1982-1999. Now everybody grinds on vast amounts of data, and it's much tougher to find an edge. Performance for the last few years has been very poor, below the S&P 500. That's before fees.
The fees on his funds are insane. 5% of capital each year, and 45% of profits. Most hedge funds charge 2% and 20%, and even that's starting to slip due to competitive pressure.
Simons retired in 2009. You have to know when to quit.
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You have to know when to quit.
It might be more accurate to say that you have to know when to start (not to mention being born at the right time!). If he tried to stay in the game he'd certainly be unable to compete eventually, but it's unlikely that he'd lose his personal fortune in doing so.
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Don't be delusional. What you describe is the exception, not the norm. http://www.fidelity.com/inside... [fidelity.com]
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It might be more accurate to say that you have to know when to start (not to mention being born at the right time!).
"Being born at the right time" only happens in hindsight. The people who really made assloads of money doing quantitative trading are the people who invented the practice. If you're clever enough to invent a whole new discipline, then there will be naysayers who dismiss you as "being born at the right time."
If human history demonstrates anything, it is that there is always the opportunity for revolutionary technology. Everything has not been invented, and there will be some new thing that enormously disr
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If he starts to fly around the world with his corporate jet and reserves an ISS passenger slot for his final weeks, we know who to call if an alien message is received by VLA from Vega.
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So then was it a fluke or not?
Glad to see someone say that (Score:5, Insightful)
Dr. Simons is quick to say this his persistence, more than his intelligence, is key to his success
So very true. So often those with natural talent give up when they first encounter difficulty, where the slow learners just keep going.
Except that they put time limits on (Score:3, Interesting)
I.Q. tests, aptitude tests, and just about all other tests. Makes you wonder if the entire examination dichotomy is wrong.
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I'd say so. I've met people with IQ >150 that can't do much and people 90 IQ (estimated) that are capable of amazing things. Passion and the ability to push on to do what they want makes a huge difference.
Re:Glad to see someone say that (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Glad to see someone say that (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it depends on why you are persisting. I think the best results in science, music, etc come from those who persist because they love what they are doing, as oppose to those who persist because of a perception of talent or prestige or obligation.
re: glad to see someone say that (Score:2)
NYT: link. [nytimes.com]
ed
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ed
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Results != intelligence.
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PS this is only a joke.
I am sure that he gives a lot to poor people too.
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According to wikipedia he contributes to Nepalese healthcare.
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That's nice for the Nepalese people.
Re:Reminds me of The Wonderful Burt Wonderstone (Score:5, Insightful)
Humans nearly died out entirely from hunger and thirst, it was visionaries that led them out of a dying region of Africa into Asia, by a route that appeared to defy reason to any non-visionary of the time.
Pre-humans nearly had their brains the size of a grapefruit and wired backwards. It was visionaries who developed fire, 2.5 million years ago, providing the much-needed nutrition that allowed us to avoid the same fate as every other lineage of hominid.
Visionaries allowed the Norse to split quartz in a way that permitted them to track the sun even in cloudy skies and well into twilight, giving them greater access to the seas, trade and food than any other society of that time.
Visionaries developed cities to handle the logistics of the brewing and baking industries, again counter to any "obvious" logic that farming and hunting were how you got food.
Visionaries are the reason you can post stuff on the Internet, and why persecuted minorities around the world can have a voice and education.
So don't tell a visionary that he is defying your common sense. His work may have implications for society that you cannot imagine simply because he has the imagination and you don't. That does not mean that it will have such an implication or that he does have that extra imagination. It simply means that visionaries have a track record of saving people from starvation.
What about normal people? Those are usually the ones who manufacture conditions suitable for mass starvation. They're the ones who create nothing but buy the rights to sue to oblivion those who do. They're the ones who have allowed security holes to develop in critical infrastructure, like nuclear power stations, and then place said infrastructure on the public Internet where anybody can play with it. They're the ones who deny Global Warming and have endangered all life on this planet.
At this point in history, we'd be better off if the normal people were rounded up, put on some nowhere continent, and left to rot at their own hands. This would also solve much of the operpopulation crisis, as they're also the ones that breed morons like rabbits. If they choose to become civilized, they're free to do so. That would be helpful, in fact. But as long as they remain normal (read: proto-human), their fate is their lookout but they've no business making it everyone else's fate too.
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Pre-humans nearly had their brains the size of a grapefruit and wired backwards.
As a med student with an engineering degree, please accept my fervent assurances that the modern human brain is wired backwards.
Imagine the worst layer-violating spaghetti code running on a bunch of servers in a dusty wiring closet with the most fucked up rat's nest interconnect patch panel from your most fevered dreams. Then imagine someone said, "Brilliant! Let's build billions of copies exactly like this! We'll rule the world with our superior design!"
Sometimes it amuses me how offensive my brain finds i
Re:Reminds me of The Wonderful Burt Wonderstone (Score:4, Insightful)
Everything you write about humanity all those many years ago is pure speculation. I am not going to get into a debate about it with you though because you sound like a bit of a tosser.
In any event, the post was kind of a joke. Not a serious criticism of your great worship-worthy master "visionary". Now go away and suck on his arse!
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I certainly do not despise him. He is the one of the most successful algo traders in history.
You are a twat.
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No, you're not getting into a discussion because after googling you found it's not speculation at all and you'd hate to lose an argument with someone whose UID is so short he was probably there.
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Er, no. There was a world before Google, I lived in it, I learnt in it.
1. What you wrote was called speculation then, and it is called speculation now.
2. You are a bit late to the party! By about 5 days.
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Sorry, SELECT statements don't work on UIDs of four digits or less.
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When people don't have enough water, giving them water is only a temporary solution. If they won't create the policies necessary to have a sustainable clean water supply, then it is pointless to give them anything.
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In the war between the reality of the universe and your feelings, the universe will win. Keep ignoring reason because it is emotionally unpleasant and you'll just be joining the losing side.
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Not at all. If fact I am a very emotionally unpleasant person. My personal view is that we should not do any charity apart from domestically. Including supplying water. Let's face it, most people who die of thirst/famine are black and have never in 100,000's years done anything to build a technology to help them to survive. It is not my problem that they are too stupid to figure out how to obtain a continuous and adequate supply of clean water!
So like I wrote before: "Just let them die of thirst then."
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Let's face it, most people who die of thirst/famine are black and have never in 100,000's years done anything to build a technology to help them to survive. It is not my problem that they are too stupid to figure out how to obtain a continuous and adequate supply of clean water!
Besides the obviously racist connotation, you are seriously misinformed.
They didn't "figure" it out because they didn't have to. They survived millions of years because they developed appropriate technology for their needs. They lived in a much more forgiving climate (except for tropical diseases) which didn't necessitate their developing all these fancy gizmos. Unfortunately, much of Africa is water stressed in ways that many parts of Europe just aren't, and no amount of engineering available until a few d
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1. If you read the tone of the thread then you will discover that there is a sense of sarcasm in my writing there. The idea that as a Christian nation we should not help people who are dying of thirst, no matter who they are or how they came to be thirsty, does certainly deserve some sarcasm.
2. Since you raised several points, let's discuss:
a) "Besides the obviously racist connotation"
Well you can't discuss planetary thirst and how thirsty people became thirsty without discussing Black people since they ar
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Not at all. I have nothing to cover up. The fact is that my original post was sarcastic as you can see from the tone of the thread. But my argument is a serious one. I have hidden nothing - Anonymous Coward! Oh, the irony!
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Why don't you grow some balls, get an account and post a criticism of the content rather than hiding behind Anonymous Coward, calling me an asshole, and accusing me of trying to cover-up with a claim of sarcasm.
If you read what I wrote (assuming you are able to read more than a single sentence in one sitting) then you will see that I wrote "you will discover that there is a sense of sarcasm in my writing there". That is not a claim that it was entirely sarcastic just that there was a sense of sarcasm.
And th
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FYI
"The researchers determined that one of the mummified individuals may belong to an ancestral group, or haplogroup, called I2, believed to have originated in Western Asia. "
http://www.nature.com/news/egy... [nature.com]
"Haplogroup I2 is the most common paternal lineage in former Yugoslavia, Romania, Bulgaria and Sardinia, and a major lineage in most Slavic countries. Its maximum frequencies are observed in Bosnia (55%, including 71% in Bosnian Croats), Sardinia (39.5%), Croatia (38%), Serbia (33%), Montenegro (31%), R
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Oh yes, Europeans just went to Africa to build pyramids without ever thinking to build any where they came from because, you know, that's just how they rolled. Where in the world has that ever happened?
One of the mummified individuals is found who "may" belong to some ancestral group proves what exactly?
What about the other mummified individuals? What about the carving and elaborate caskets and tombs that show people with distinctly African features? Or is anything that doesn't fit your crackpot theory disc
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One of the mummified individuals is found who "may" belong to some ancestral group proves what exactly?
It's not about one individual, there's a large body of evidence pointing in that direction.
What about the other mummified individuals?
Which others? Like the pale ginger Ramesses II., the most famous king of them all?
What about the carving and elaborate caskets and tombs that show people with distinctly African features?
What about them? Nobody claims that there have never been any Nubians at all in Ancient Egypt. They just never lived there in sufficient numbers so as to justify the claim that Ancient Egypt was a country of people with "distinctly African features".
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These black people built aqueducts and pyramids in Egypt, and built rather impressive cities all over Africa. Well before anyone else was building anything remotely comparable. So, they (we) are not as useless as you imagine.
These claims are inconsistent with recorded history and with archaeological finds. First, in Egypt, the Ancient Egyptian civilization was built by people practically identical to modern Egyptians, who are definitely not black (and they weren't building any aqueducts, unless of course you're using this as an *extremely* overblown term for humble irrigation ditches). Second, outside Egypt, when other Africans (I assume you are talking about black Africans specifically) were building "rather impressive cities"
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Maybe Dr Simons could buy rights to math texts (Score:5, Interesting)
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he's an amazing guy (Score:4, Insightful)
but trying to play the slow kid isn't exactly working. He finished a PhD at 23! that, if nothing else, tells you just how fast he is. He may not be able to do long division in his head quicker than some, but in his areas of competence, he is an intellectual giant who ALSO happens to work harder than you.
Persistence or raw intelligence (Score:5, Insightful)
" Dr. Simons is quick to say this his persistence, more than his intelligence, is key to his success"
That's a very interesting thought. I'm very interested in science, engineering, etc. but seem to lack the innate math ability to do anything beyond a bachelors degree. I probably would have been a lot happier as a researcher, but by the end of doing a BS in chemistry, I was pretty burned out. What's interesting about that statement and made me think is this -- if we were able to pull in more people who aren't "good at school" but still have something useful to contribute, there could be a lot of talent picked up. Success in early education still hinges on the ability to do well on timed tests that check your ability to remember key facts. Therefore, it favors people who can get the material down quickly and have a photographic memory. And it all builds -- early diagnostic tests in elementary school start identifying people's strengths and determining where they should focus, the SATs and other entrance exams determine to some extent what further education you are able to pursue, and exams in undergrad college courses determine whether you stay in the education game or not. For people who don't do well on tests, this can really discourage any further study, even through there's much less emphasis on this kind of learning/testing cycle in graduate studies. It's an interesting thought now that a lot of "knowledge work" is even disappearing and we have to find something for everyone to do. Identifying talent without equating talent to memory ability is a challenge for the current system. I'm not saying everyone can be a Ph.D researcher, I'm just saying that I think we miss a lot of people who could be good at this stuff along the way.
One of the things that has always struck me about math education is that so little applied math is taught. Now that I don't have the pressure to perform on exams anymore, sometimes I go back and try to figure out some of the math concepts that I never fully understood. Pairing the procedural stuff with a real world example makes it so much easier to understand, and makes it less of a procedure. Simons is a good example of taking something highly theoretical (basic math research) and applying it to something practical (being one of the first hedge funds to do HFT/heavy data analysis.) Unfortunately, it's very difficult to teach applied math to a class of 30 students, some of whom don't care, so a lot of people miss out on this. But it's kind of like chemistry...you have to have a good early education experience to make the jump from chemistry being a jumble of elements, equations, etc. to a set of rules describing how materials interact. People who don't get that exposure in their first chemistry classes aren't likely to continue.
He's right though -- people who work hard and are persistent do get ahead. Not always, and life isn't fair sometimes, but that tends to be true everywhere. Yes, some people just get lucky, and we only hear about those examples in media. But for normals, how well you do is definitely linked with how much effort you put in.
I wish there were more stories like this (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't like him (Score:3, Insightful)
He worked for the NSA...
He made his money through High Frequency trading... which is nothing more than steeling...
I guess he worked for the NSA prior to them going Full Tilt Gestapo on us... but the HF Trading thing I can't let go of. That's basically stealing from the peoples retirement and is flat out evil. Being a "math genius" he would have know what he was doing.
That's nothing! (Score:3)
I'm a mathematics genius too. I counted all my money, and I've managed to amass 23 billion pounds, just in my wallet (and that's after I bought lunch). That doesn't include all the money in my penny jar at home and the stuff that's down the back of the sofa. If we add all that, I'm pretty sure I'm the second richest person in the world.
So how'd he make his fortune? (Score:1)
Since the article points how how wealthy he is, did he use his understanding of math to somehow make all that money?
Wait! He's a hedge fund owner! (Score:2)
Why am I not more impressed? (Score:2)
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"James Harris Simons was born to a Jewish family"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J... [wikipedia.org]
So you want him to spend the money in Israel?
Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (Score:2)