In my day quants on Wall Street perenially complained about their bonuses, believing that analytical skills should be positively correlated with pay; this was a Quant’s Tzuris (link provided for non-Yiddish speakers).

I heard someone introduce a journalist at a round table recently by saying: “He’s written better than people who’ve written more and he’s written more than people who’ve written better.”

Now I have come up with what should be a Quant’s Solace: “I make more than people who are smarter and I am smarter than people who make more.”

It has not escaped my attention that this philosophy of the contingent maximum can be used by many disgruntled people in a variety of fields, personal and professional.