I’ve played table tennis for eight years. I like playing, and I can also spend a long time talking through the technique and strategy of a match.
Outside that: the gym with friends, Scotland Yard, horror films, and documentaries about athletes. I also get drawn into long conversations about hypothetical situations.
Usually, there are friends involved.
One week from my notebook
Small cases. Then a very long week.
I spent a week trying small cases, modular arithmetic, and algebra on IMO 1988 Problem 6. None of those attempts gave me a proof. I eventually learned the method of Vieta jumping.
I want more time with difficult proofs, and people to work through them with.
If ab + 1 divides a² + b², why is
a² + b²ab + 1
always a perfect square? For positive integers a and b.
I want to study pure mathematics deeply: spend longer with abstract ideas, write better proofs, and understand why an argument works. Some questions interest me even when I can’t see an application for them.
Execution trading is another direction I want to explore. Once there’s a decision to trade, how should it be carried out? I’m interested in how timing, available liquidity, and the orders themselves affect what happens next.
I don’t have a fixed endpoint yet. These are the questions I want to spend more time with.
My currency-market research
What could I have known then?
In my EUR/USD study, I ask what I could actually know when unusual quote activity first becomes detectable. A price move that has already happened is different from one a model still needs to predict.
Most of the average signed movement was already recorded at detection. The forecast extensions I tested did not improve their benchmarks. I’ve kept those results, and the limits of the study, in the account of the work.