Todd, Author at Raise Your Game

Gaming

When is “Close Enough” Good Enough? An Analysis of Backgammon, Golf, Chess, and Football

January 21, 2025 by Todd

Backgammon has been one of my favorite ways to spend time with my family over the years. When we first started playing, we kept the game simple: whoever was the first to remove all their stones won. Over time, we learned that there’s more to the game than just winning;...

What's Making Waves

How Susquehanna Teaches New Traders

November 6, 2023 by Todd

Education is extremely important to us at Susquehanna, and the amount of time and prep we give our incoming Quantitative Traders helps them to succeed once they get to the floor on their own. Quantitative Traitor Interview: Decisions, Decisions, Decisions I joined Kevin D of Quantitative Traitor to talk about...

Decision Making

Podcast: How to Make Better Long-Term Decisions

September 23, 2021 by Todd

Todd Simkin, an Associate Director at Susquehanna, has played an integral role in the development of Susquehanna’s firm-wide and trader education programs. Tune in to his recent interview on The Knowledge Project podcast to learn more about how we approach decision making.

What's Making Waves

Book Review: The Data Detective by Tim Harford

April 14, 2021 by Todd

Tim Harford seems to be showing up again and again in the world of rational decision making, from newspapers (he is a columnist for the Financial Times) to podcasts (Fifty Things That Made the Modern Economy, Cautionary Tales, etc.) to radio (More or Less) to books (The Undercover Economist, How...

Mathematical Magic: Tricks to Stump Your Friends

Gaming

Mathematical Magic: 3 Tricks to Stump Your Friends

April 17, 2019 by Todd

Much of the content of this blog has focused on games and gambling, and an underlying theme in many of the posts has been the mathematics that underlie decisions or approaches to play. There is another area where mathematics comes up in clever but unexpected ways: magic. (And no, this...

Sports

Olympic Curling – A Turn-Based Strategy Game

February 22, 2018 by Todd

I regularly go 47 months in a row without thinking about curling even once, and then I spend a month fascinated by the sport. I don’t think I am alone in this. The Winter Olympics provides the only venue for me to watch curling (I think; I really haven’t looked),...

Sports

Insuring the Indians’ Win Streak

September 22, 2017 by Todd

ESPN recently ran an article about an Ohio-based window company that guaranteed any of its customers who installed windows (the kind that makes walls transparent, not the PC operating system), siding, or doors in the month of July would have their money returned if the Cleveland Indians had a 15-game...

Why you should play your worse fantasy football lineup

Sports

Fantasy Football: Play Your Worse Lineup?

November 28, 2016 by Todd

Before we get into fantasy football strategies, let’s first discuss nontransitivity in preferences. Most of our day-to-day experience is with coherent preferences; if I like Kit Kats more than Mounds, and I like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups more than Kit Kats, then I must like the PB Cups more than...

Poker

What are they Thinking?

April 19, 2016 by Todd

Recently in Susquehanna’s training class, there was a hand of 7 Card Stud/8-or-Better that had an interesting play worth discussing. This is a high/low game, where the best 5-card poker hand out of 7 cards wins half the pot, and the best low hand (that has no card higher than...

Gaming

If You’re Reading This, You Probably Didn’t Win the Powerball

February 8, 2016 by Todd

The buzz may be over, but let's take a look at what your odds were of winning the largest Powerball prize drawing to date anyway. The estimated jackpot was $1.5 Billion, which is more than the GDP of Djibouti (and 25 other countries). The problem with playing in a lottery...