Thread by @rebootdude

This summer marks my 34th year of playing with numbers.

As an actuary, a model builder, a computer science and computational finance specialist.

My first model, 1988. A financial model on a Lotus 123 spreadsheet.

I was a teenage intern at Next Hardware Shop.

3 internships had seen me grow from answering phones, filing paperwork to being useful when I was not blowing up power supplies.

To be honest I was replicating a paper model on Lotus 123. Not rocket science but linking cells on a screen was more fun than stuff I had done before.

Across 3 decades, I have realized that us quantitative types often keep equations in our head that drive our behavior, our responses, our actions.

Good old give and take. I will put this much effort in, I will get this much back. Plus, minus.

It makes us transactional beings.

Most numerically inclined or gifted people I know take these equations quite seriously.

You can disrupt their world by going off model. They don't know how to respond to something that doesn't fit the math.

As in how could you do that? What were you thinking?

For the longest time, I certainly did.

That is how I became an actuary. It was a rational choice. Play with numbers and get paid for it.

It made all the sense in the world, specially after that earlier affair with Lotus in the summer of 1988.

Personal choices were driven by the planned career path I had laid out than by what I really wanted to do.

My then model was exams per year. So many exams per year to get to the @SOActuaries Fellowship I wanted. So many hours per day for each exam.

Models and equations.

Yet there were times where if I had listened to the rational part of my brain, I wouldn’t be me.

Our choices, our regrets, our dreams define us.

If everything we did was transactional, we would be one dimensional beings.

Without any depth.

Transparent. Predictable.

The sum of my choices, the essence of me shouldn’t be a simple equation or God forbid, charts and graphs.

Because if that was, I wouldn't be me.

That is a really subversive thought. Once you let it inside, it corrodes all your equations.

For me the start was a vision in white.

Someone who would soon become my muse, my inspiration, a fellow traveler and my better half.

When the world broke me, she put me back together again.

I didn't know it but she certainly didn't fit any models or equations I had in my head.

Models are definitive. That is their problem.

They limit what you can do by putting up boundary conditions that define behavior.

Fawzia threw all the models out.

Because in her world, you lived, you experienced life. You didn't waste any time modeling it.

I remember it drove my then boss crazy.

Here was this guy, model employee, completely predictable, no issues with long hours, always willing to take one for the team.

And now he wanted a life? Has he gone mad?

Did I mention all my bosses were also numerically inclined?

Free of numbers, we did a lot of crazy things. Irrational things.

Things that often had the same reactions my bosses had. What were you thinking? Are you mad?

Looking back it was the irrationality that defined me, not the models.

I quit my job, applied to @Columbia_Biz, moved to London, worked for @GoldmanSachs, lived in Harlem, wrote business plans, said no to 6 figure offers in '99, cycled to work in Orange County without health insurance, drowned, got served eviction notices, crashed and burned.

And that is just a small part of the public domain list. Stuff that I can write about.

Imagine the things I am not supposed to write about.

Subverting models starts with a simple act. A choice.

Give more than you receive. Leave something on the table. Stop being transactional

As I teach fresh faced undergrad and grad students, I sit them down and introduce them to this subversive thought:

Rationality is over rated.

Throw out the equation. Walk on the wild side. Live a little. Give destiny a spin.

You would be surprised where life would take you.

There is more to life than models, spreadsheets, charts and graphs.

The friends you kept, ones who make you laugh and you truly care about, are all imperfect.

We model imperfections as residual errors. As Alpha. The unexplainable. One which cannot be modeled.

Remember that.