I recently summoned up the courage to direct Ted Snyder (dean of the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago) towards my latest book. As the author of a text claiming that mathematical theories can destroy the financial markets – a text that puts a lot of blame on the current business school status quo, with its unhealthy adoration for the theoretical method – I was not sure if Mr Snyder would be pleased to hear from me.

I needn’t have feared, as he proved non- confrontational. He did, though, press me on whether I had included in my analysis the work of Eugene Fama (a legendary Chicago professor) warning that the distribution of returns has fat tails and thus is not a normal distribution, contrary to what financial economics has long argued.