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The Billionaire Mathematician
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."
This is why I tell people to stay in school. Even if you're smarter than most, you have a lot to learn.
FTA
Nearby, on Madison Square Park, is the National Museum of Mathematics, or MoMath, 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
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
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,"
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.
You "editors" are lower than TMZ fuckwits.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
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.
It's the only way to be sure.
"hundreds of millions of people are dying of thirst all around the world... ...so your charity was to supply them with clean water, right"
"No. I built a huge telescope to look for ripples from the theorised big bang."
I.Q. tests, aptitude tests, and just about all other tests. Makes you wonder if the entire examination dichotomy is wrong.
And release them under an open source license. Perhaps also organise a group of people to continue developing the content. I have in mind Mary L. Boas' book Mathematical Methods in the Physical Sciences. Mary L. Boas died a few years ago and her book is in its third edition. I have no idea what the publishers plan to do with it, but surely those who own the rights to it would be persuadable by the appropriate application of money.
Just another traitor of the people and NSA stasi hund. Fuck this nasty excuse of a human being.
Yep! I'm pondering what it should feel like to have a billion dollars in the bank! I'm also using my advanced math to count it many ways to make sure its still all there!
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.
" 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.
Unfortunately, very few people who complete a PhD in this country go on to acheive much financially. Even as the chair of a math department his salary was dwarfed by that paid to the football coach of the same university. It is sad that research pays so poorly in this country in spite of its great benefits.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
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.
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.
Simons is great - he's a multi-billionaire, but he still does lectures on topology you can get on YouTube, and he's as excited about it now as ever. I got interested in topology, a branch of math I'd never looked at before, by stumbling over one of his lectures. I did not understand ANYTHING, but his engaging style made him one of the best lecturers I've ever seen, and I started learning more.
Still, like Bill Gates, the #1 ingredient to his success was timing. He was the right person at the right time when the "quant" stuff was just starting, and he could make a lot of money. Anyone earlier wouldn't have had the data and computers, and anyone later would find a mature, level playing field. I still think that the biggest ingredient to success is the exact timing of doing something when it is first possible, and that's the one thing no one can control. There are equally brilliant people who didn't have that same window of opportunity.
So why do we still have "governments" robbing (taxing) people to fund some research or anything?
Go Seawolves!
Is it true that he still smokes a pack a day?
The article was VERY poorly written, jumping from one event to another with no thought of continuity.
Did any of those billions originate in Bogata? If not, why mention it.
Maybe there is a movie hiding in plain sight....
Sort of a cross between "Beautiful Mind" and "Wolf of Wall Street".
Excuse me, I have a screenplay to write.
Since the article points how how wealthy he is, did he use his understanding of math to somehow make all that money?
Why is he receiving accolades on Slashdot? He does automated, high frequency trading! Oh wait, never mind. He's a democrat/leftist. Phew!
Born into a family with money which encouraged his education, he went on to make more money.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
... and other worthless third world invaders, no doubt. Will he face reality and admit that the races different, and that some races are less intelligent than others? Will he help HIS OWN RACE? Of course not. So being a multi-billionaire hasn't given him the ability to tell the truth, has it.
America is being destroyed by millions of ungrateful, parasitic third worlders, who can't stand their own races, and are the real 'white supremacists' - they believe that white countries are superior to the ones their own races make... And this idiot is pissing away his money on trying to help unintelligent blacks become geniuses, when their very DNA prevents that from ever happening.
TFA should have mentioned that Simons has given large amounts of money to Brookhaven National Labs to keep the RHIC running.
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!