Andy Black doesn´t set an alarm. His mind, bubbling with mathematics, wakes him before the sun rises over Pasadena. Ignoring six days´ worth of red stubble, he drives to work in a 2003 Acura that looks, inside and out, brand-new. It´s a short drive to the spacious academic office where he works. There´s no one else in the building yet, which suits Black just fine; later, when the place fills up, people will be incessantly bugging him with math questions. He gets right to work, striding to a blackboard and briskly chalking a maze of arbitrage equations.