Missing Numbers

Always on the lookout for the reasons “why I went wrong” I was reminded recently about my ineptitude at mathematics. Sure I can add and subtract. Multiplication, percentages and even long division are skills I can just about perform. But I went through my formative years regarding mathematics as being much too technical, much too boring. As a result I possibly missed out on both great wealth and, strangely, some (almost incompehensible) element of pleasure.

I could, for instance, have become skilled at computer programming. I would have learned the different forms of Basic, C, C++, the two great aunts (Fortran and Ada), and thence to HTML, Java, and so on. After all this is an area which hardly existed when I was born, and which has developed through my lifetime. As a bookseller I sold the books which inspired the Internet boom of the nineties, but I failed to pay attention to the content of those books and totally missed any opportunity of becoming a dot.com billionaire.

And then there is the Square Mile. Could I have been an Investment Banker, a Hedge Fund Maestro, a Stock Market King? Again, probably not. I’m not good enough, or interested enough, in the maths. This week I leafed through a new book on technical analysis, Marber on Markets. Here are the charts that define good trading. The “head and shoulders” peaks, the different variations, the clouds, the bounces. And Brian Marber explains all these with the rather fetching enthusiasm of a man who really enjoys what he is doing. Whenever I select a share (I don’t do commodities, currencies, bonds, etc.) I act as if I’m on a racecourse looking for a horse to back. “Ah, this one is a snowy white grey (like the older brother) and is drawn on Mum’s birthday – I’ll back that”. Never will I check the form book, the breeding, previous timings and draw numbers. Marber was the first man to run an Investment Fund entirely through Technical Analysis and he prospered. Not only that, but he enjoyed himself.

The good Captain Aubrey in Patrick O’Brien’s novels, may have been a swashbuckling, fast-living, Boys Own Magazine hero. But he was also a keen mathematician, and wholeheartedly enthused about the subject which, as a navigator, was essential to his career. Only yesterday a septuagenarian neighbour told me how a long coach journey taken a few weeks ago had afforded the opportunity “for me to teach Barbara calculus – such fun!”

Maybe I’d better stop fighting with Sudoku puzzles and try and learn some healthy trigonometry instead. A little strenuous mental discipline would probably do me good.