Genius or Fooled by Randomness

Am I getting wiser or am I just a genius?I would like to think I am both, let me tell you a little story. Last week Maurice, Charis and I were discussing ways to massage the data that we are feeding our macro model. You see the problem we have is that the data we use is in different formats, i.e. the index is daily data and then we have macro variables that are daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly in format.Can you see that the statistical information we receive MAY be distorted, so our Professor consultant suggested a couple of weeks ago a method of stretching say monthly data to in fact make it look like daily data. There are various algebraic techniques which I will leave for now, and we are in the process of doing the math.On Monday this week whilst discussing a similar issue revolving around how to identify whether the macro variables do in fact have a relationship with the index, I am pretty good at random problem solving, so guess what I threw a "way out there" idea at the team.I remembered going on a course which covered cycles in the stock markets, it works with mathematical formulae that somehow seem to be able to predict certain cycles. The most common of which is called a "Fourier Cycle Regression." Somewhere in the depth of my mind I could see an inclining of a solution through the Fourier regression technique.Naturally as I most probably would have done, Maurice and Charis shot me down, they had vaguely heard of the formulae but knew very little about it and how it could solve our problem.Today we had a meeting with all the people involved in our model development, and after putting forward our problem; our Professor of Mathematics said I think I have a solution. "We need to run Wavelets through our data using 'Fourier Regression" to see where there is 'noise' in the data so that we can sift the good data from the bad. The technique is called "data mining". An example would be used in Physics; picture a laser gun, it shoots a particle and it splits into millions of pieces, now if you wanted to work out from which whole particle this shard comes from you would run millions of wavelet currents through the particle shards to kind of see which ones belonged to who. (I think this is how it works).

Wow did I feel smart having mentioned this idea!!Now coming to my title was my suggestion on Monday with all its naïveté the work of a genius or was it just the random act of throwing out ideas from the base of my limited knowledge?You see it cannot be genius if I have thrown scores of ideas at different problems with only 1 or 2 striking home. So although I believe I am not quite the fool who is tricked into falling for random luck, however I do believe, the genius may just be in the act of continuing to throw way out ideas at different problems, even with a low strike rate.So in the end am I a genius or am I fooled into the belief that coming up with a genius idea for a difficult problem is enough to make me a genius. Could I be both a genius and a fool at the same time, or can I be a random fool or worse just a fool?I think the answer is firstly that I am no genius, however, that doesn't mean I cannot have moments of genius, such as the time above. The message I think is that by continuing to come up with moments of genius, no matter how rare they may be, puts one the path to becoming a genius. So no I am not fooled by the randomness of my genius, I am however encouraged by the fact that I am on my way to becoming a genius.