Have any skilled mathmatecians ever made a killing in the stock market or combined financial, economic and mathmatical knowledge to generate loads of money? How did they do it?
Is mathmatical knowledge useful in the world of big business? Why are there so few rich mathmeticians? Surely their skills (when combined with financial knowledge) gives them an advantage?
(Note to mods: This is in GQ not IMHO because it requires factual answers e.g. Ian Bentley)
On Wall Street they are called “Quants” for quantitative analysts. Some have become very successful and weatlthy. They were really working in statistical analysis, however. Typically, they come up with a formula or algorithm that beats the market, often by providing a better return with leverage and by reducing risk through hedging, and then they set up their own hedge fund.
William Eckhardt has a PhD in mathematics. He’s a professional futures trader (remember futures market from that movie with Eddie Murphy and Dan Akroyd (sp?)). He was profiled in “Market Wizards” book.
Also, there’s that british mathematician who solved one of the Clay Institute challenges, and thus elligible for a cool million. I hear a russian mathematician also seems to have lectured about a solution to another of the 10 Clay challenges, so he might also get a million eventually (if his proof is correct).
I wouldn’t say he’s a millionaire, but my high school math teacher was a fiend for game theory. By very strictly obeying his “rules” and only bringing a limited amount of money, he was able to take an annual trip to Atlantic City and realize a modest (but still enjoyable) profit over the long run. I believe the game he played most often was either baccarat or blackjack.
Wow, I can go back now and tell my husband (QuantGuy) that he really he a mathematician! You see he has the engineering undergrad degree (despite being a quantitative analyst) and I have the mathematics undergrad degree but he is constantly accusing me of being an engineer wannabe!
Woo Hoo Math rulez!!!
Stephen Wolfram became a multi-millionaire after he developed the Mathematica software package.
Damn you, I was just about to post this.
I’m reading that book now, and Eckhardt is the man.
Skeptico, I checked the Clay Institute web site and Google News but I found nothing on anyone solving a Millennium Prize Puzzle.
Do you have some hard info on this?
http://www.mathpuzzle.com/eternity.html
The eternity puzzle: IIRC someone designed a jigsaw with 100s of pieces all simple polygons, (ie. no interlocking) and no design on, and offered £1m if anyone could solve it. A couple of cambridge mathematicians used a computer and successively better algorithms to do it.
Of course, there were two of them, so no-one’s a millionaire here. But I thought it was worth mentioning. There’s also a variety of more series prizes 
The problem with a true mathemetician becoming a millionaire is:
Before you can have a million dollars, you have to get to half a million dollars,
Before that, you have to make a quarter of a million dollars,
Before that, you have to make 125,000…
And so forth, and they can just never get there.
(Tongue firmly in cheek.)
In response to OP, the challenge for mathematicians to make money in financial markets is twofold:
most of financial mathematics is pretty straightforward…NPV’s, etc. analysts typically add value with their knowledge of finance, financial reporting, industries, etc.
complex mathematics is difficult to apply to the real world of finance. There are often too many constraints and assumptions to fit the existing market circumstances.
That’s why when someone does find an algorithm or method that beats the market, it’s valuable. Anyone got some spare change to invest?
Just to give the details for those interested, Dr. Grigori Perelman is believed to have solved the Poincare Conjecture… http://mathworld.wolfram.com/news/2003-04-15/poincare/
I believe John Kemeny is a candidate. As one of the originators of BASIC, he had business interests that should have generated more than enough wealth for him to qualify.
Wouldn’t they be economists?
Isaac Newton, inventor of calculus and Newtonian mechanics, pulled in a few pounds from his work at the Royal mint:
I don’t know exactly what £2000 in 1699 translate to in modern figures, but it’s quite a chunk of change.
Actuaries rake it in, or so I’ve heard. I hear their job is mostly math, but I don’t really know much about it.
That’s exactly the sort of link I was looking for. Thanks, Splanky. I’s surprised it’s not on the Clay Institute site. I wonder when the prize will be formally awarded?
Note that the link is one Wolfram’s Mathworld site. The man is now an industry.
When Genius Failed is a fascinating book about a group of men who used sophisticated mathematical principles to make money in the financial markets. They made billions of dollars, but, as the books title suggests, ultimately they lost a lot too. They were financial economists, rather than mathematicians, but their trading was based on mathematical models developed by Robert Merton, who had won the Nobel Prize in economics.
We have a local billionaire who made his money from Statistics. His name is Jim Goodnight and he founded SAS Institute which makes software. The cofounder is another statistician who is easily worth close to a billion.
I believe that they guy who won the World Series of Poker last year had a master’s degree in math. The prize was several million dollars.
-lv