The Blindfolded Archer 
Donald MacKenzie
- The (Mis)behaviour of Markets: A Fractal View of Risk, Ruin and Reward by Benoit Mandelbrot and Richard Hudson
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 teaches sociology at the University of Edinburgh. His research on credit derivatives is being supported by the UK Economic and Social Research Council.
Other articles by this contributor:
An Address in Mayfair · How to Start a Hedge Fund
End-of-the-World Trade · the credit crisis
The Political Economy of Carbon Trading · A Ratchet
What’s in a Number? · The $300 Trillion Question
Fear in the Markets · Donald MacKenzie writes about the ways in which ‘finance theory’ becomes part of what it examines
All Those Arrows · a Major Cause of the Financial Crisis
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