The Blindfolded Archer 
Donald MacKenzie
- The (Mis)behaviour of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin and Reward by Benoit Mandelbrot and Richard Hudson Buy this book
A lycée in Lyon, 1944. A young Polish refugee is hiding in the school. His identity papers are forged, and deportation to the death camps may await him if he is caught. His attention, however, is not on the dangers outside but on a mathematics lesson. When he first started taking the classes, ‘he sat uncomprehending before the meaningless words and numbers on the blackboard.’ Today, though, a picture has coalesced in his mind. It renders redundant the teacher’s protracted algebraic manipulations. He raises his hand: ‘Sir, you don’t need to make any calculations. The answer is obvious.’
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Donald MacKenzie’s Material Markets: How Economic Agents Are Constructed will be published by Oxford. He teaches sociology at Edinburgh University.
Other articles by this contributor:
End-of-the-World Trade · the credit crisis
Fear in the Markets · Donald MacKenzie writes about the ways in which ‘finance theory’ becomes part of what it examines
The Political Economy of Carbon Trading · A Ratchet
What’s in a Number? · The $300 Trillion Question
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