A Beautiful Mind

Patterns and codes feature at several points in the book and provide insights into the way Nash’s mind works. From a young age, he is “obsessed with inventing secret codes” (36); this continues, as he gets older, through his deep interest in studying patterns and formulating mathematical models for behavior and events. A clear example of this can be found in his “obsession with the stock and bond markets” and his belief that “there might be a secret to the market, not a conspiracy, but a theorem” (233). Similarly, Nash’s work on game theory is based on the idea that there are reliable patterns to human behavior and that sufficiently complex mathematical models can predict people’s choices. This reflects Nash’s logical thought processes and his “worship of the rational life and quantification” (104). When Nash becomes ill, his obsession with patterns mutates to reflect his dysfunctional thought processes, effectively becoming “a caricature of itself” (19). 

He starts seeing encoded messages in newspaper articles and patterns in everyday occurrences and begins ascribing meanings where there are none. One particularly noticeable example of this is his belief that men in Boston wearing red ties are part of some form of pattern that conveys secret messages about “a crypto-communist party” (243).