On countback A true story: a couple of decades ago a friend of a friend had a 'few too many' and crashed his car onto the middle of a roundabout at 2am. He panicked and left the car where it was, with a not-so-cunning plan to collect it the next… full article

It's about time The exponential function or exponential growth has been a matter of great concern and newsworthiness in 2020 and early 2021, for obvious reasons. Thankfully there are some reasons to believe that a novel coronavirus may burn out naturally in time, while humans tend to build up a… full article

Australian tech matters Tech and innovation represents so much more than internet search engines, live streaming, and handheld electronic devices, spanning widely across manufacturing, energy, resources, agriculture, and much more besides. For decades Australia has lagged far behind the U.S. and elsewhere in terms of its risk-taking, technological innovation, and… full article

False alarm In 1971, during the tumult of the Vietnam War, an emergency action notification was sent in error to U.S. broadcast stations, with an operator inadvertently sending out the wrong tape to networks. The message instructed networks to cease transmission of regular programming immediately and issue an alert announcement… full article

Artificial intervention In 1969 engineers decided that since there had been apparent rockfalls and erosion at Niagara Falls human intervention may be required to remove huge boulders at the base of the falls. At colossal effort and expense some 28,000 tons of rock were used to build a cofferdam to… full article

Winds of change When I worked in London about two decades ago, I used to audit a couple of chains of turf accountants, more commonly known as bookies. Bookmaking operators were often exceptionally smart businessmen who had successfully generated profits for years through their chains of high street betting shops.… full article

Old traders and bold traders Ed Seykota once said that 'there are old traders and bold traders, but there are no old, bold traders'. We've recently seen a spate of new traders (and speculators) roaring into the market with extremely high levels of confidence, while some of the more experienced… full article

Soccer stars & space cadets When our teachers at school asked what we wanted to be as adults, there was always an interesting range of responses, ranging from dream careers (professional sports stars, robot engineers) to those guided by parental preference (usually actuaries or barristers). Looking back, I don't think… full article

Luck versus skill (FIGJAM) Too many of us have a natural tendency to believe that we've achieved everything through our own hard graft. It's all too easy to downplay the fortunate aspects of our circumstances (in my case, for example, being born in a developed country, to well-educated parents, who… full article

Monte Carlo Grand Prix It's nearly that festive time of year again when the economic soothsayers will be out in force to make their 2020 predictions! A genuine model of outcomes for next year might run through a Monte Carlo simulation, using a range of different variables and probabilities to… full article