One man's neat, elegant and mathematically compelling solution for getting a top job in a bank or hedge fund

It's also time consuming and involves lots of work. But still.

The great idea comes via David Biello, an author for Scientific American, who yesterday tweeted that:

"embedded at the end of this interview is the secret to landing a job at goldman sachs or trading house of your choice..."

The idea, expounded by the statistical physicist H. Eugene Stanley of Boston University, is communicated as follows:

Let me tell you a story: two to the power of 10 is 1,024. One way to predict the market is to call up 1,024 trading places and tell half of them by week's end the market will be up and the other half that the market will be down. At the end of the week, forget about the half that knows you were wrong. Keep doing that for 10 weeks and, at the end, you will have called the market correctly for one person who will think you are a genius.

Obviously, this approach depends upon there being 1,024 people who will listen to your predictions. It also depends upon your predictions being one dimensional, which may detract from your perceived wisdom. But Biello has a point: persuading someone to hire you is a numbers game. The more people you approach, the higher your chances.