Once up on a time big brains invested all of their time and energy on big questions. Unfortunately, even today, most of us might struggle to comprehend their final answers.
In the world of Financial Services and Investment, however, it’s important to possess the kind of inquisitive and analytical mind that relishes the opportunity to find solutions to what can often be complex, challenging, number-crunching problems.
So, in celebration of life’s complexities and conundrums, we’ve chosen three of history’s most famous and most infuriatingly difficult, numbers-based puzzles.
We also look at which of today’s movers in the world of Financial Services and Investment would be best suited to trying to solve them in 2015 (don’t worry, this isn’t a test, the hard parts have already been done for you!).
The Enigma Machine
Long before Benedict Cumberbatch solved this riddle for us in the movies, the Arthur Scherbius Nazi encoding machine relied on four mathematically driven rotors that would substitute the typed letter with a completely different one, but never on a letter-for-letter basis, thereby delivering messages that were different every time. These where impossible to decode. Or were they?
Enter Benedict . . sorry, Alan Turing. Turing worked out that the machine’s messages were sent in a particular format.
Once the rotors were set, it would be possible to decode the message on the other end. He developed the Bombe, a machine that tried several combinations of rotor settings, eliminating the mass of work in decoding an Enigma message . . . and cutting short World War Two by two years in the process.
Turing was an exceptional man: today, solving Financial Services and investment scenarios as challenging as Enigma would require teamwork.
First we’d need a Project Manager to take charge of who would focus on what in solving problems and offering solutions, a Performance Analyst to analyse how everything works in practice, and maybe even a data compliance analyst to confirm theories as working solutions.
Of course, we couldn’t take chances with the outcome, so a Risk Manager could lead stress-testing workshops, provide effective reviews, undertake capital analysis . . . and present the final results.
Archimedes Stomachion
Archimedes, Ancient Greece’s answer to Carol Vorderman, is considered one of the greatest number crunchers in history. But this ancient puzzle dating back to about 250BC had been bamboozling mathematicians for millennia.
The goal of the Stomachion is to determine exactly how many ways 14 pieces can be put together to make a square. Can’t be that hard? Think again.
It only took 2,250 years but someone cracked the code. In 2002 maths historian Reviel Netz was examining an ancient text on the puzzle, and worked out it used a system of maths called combinatorics, which deals with the number of ways a problem can be solved. In 2003, mathematicians settled on the number 17,152.
Had the Stomachion not been solved, we’d undoubtedly need Financial Data Analysts to work through the sheer volume of numbers and try to find a pattern. That’s their forte, after all.
Or we might even need a derivative Operations Analyst, to work out how all of those complex maths formulae work – and put in place effective monitoring and controls to mitigate any risk of failure.
Poincaré Conjecture
Essentially this puzzle states that any three-dimensional space without any holes in it is equivalent to a stretched sphere and, dependant on the mathematical result, it could help determine the shape of the universe.
That’s the theory. But how do you prove it?
The best men for the job today, would no doubt be Static Data Analysts – the entire thing is based on arithmetical yes’s or no’s or stress testers, to make sure the solution worked in practice.
A Paraplanner, meanwhile, with their first-class communication skills would be able to provide research and report writing to ensure everyone receives a complete and comprehensive overview.
The solution was worth $1,000,000 from the Clay Institute. Step forward Dr Grigori Perelman. In 2002 the mathematician, while working with the Steklov Institute of Mathematics in St Petersburg, was confirmed as the man behind solving the conundrum.
Incredibly, he refused the money and the fame, choosing to live a life of seclusion instead – thereby proving that some things in life just don’t add up!