People are math challenged

Play video #16 at Tom Breitling's web site . The video is called casino losses. The one executive, Tim Poster says the laws of probability still exist at the Golden Nugget, just like they do everywhere else ... it's like a bubble, almost, and the bubble can only get so big before it bursts. When it bursts the casino is there to pick up the pieces .

Background information, this was the year 2004, and these two young men bought the Golden Nugget from MGM-MIRAGE for $215 million. Tim Poster decided to greatly increase the maximum craps bet and to introduce 6X-8X-10X odds to attract big time players.

While professing gambling savvy, Tim's bubble argument is just the standard gambler's fallacy that what's past influences the future. He is just putting a statistical spin on it.

Also, by saying that the law's of probability apply at the GN, just like anywhere else, he is simply talking about expected value, and not variance. By raising the table maximums high enough he is inviting in players who have personal fortunes to rival the casino owners. The two men had invested $25 million apiece of their own money (which was roughly half their net worth).

Normally the casino's bankroll will outlast that of any player, but these super whales who knew a good opportunity decided to avail themselves of it. The casino has to book all bets and can't walk away ... it can only change the limits and bar certain players. Its possible that when one of those two executives said Players he meant customers in general but the other executive was focused on the individual customers who could simply walk away with their chips rather than continue at the tables.

I still think that one guy with the entourage, the same dice call, the no breaks, etc. may have been scamming them.
Just because the guy got rich in some computer programming venture doesn't mean he is honest and upright. He may simply have gone from switching his own dice into the game at a ten dollar table to switching his own dice into the game at a ten million dollar table.

Quote: DJTeddyBear

She looked at me like that sort of rocket science was beyond her capabilities.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the next generation of gamblers...the kind that will think that double zero roulette is better because it has one more way to win, and that 6:5 is more than 3:2.

I think you forget that for most of those in the casino it is YOUR generation that thinks Two Zeros is twice as good and that it is YOUR generation that flocks to a casino if its marguee features 6:5 in two-foot high letters. The problem is not with the NEXT generation. We have met the enemy and he is us.

>Sigh.... Thanks for letting me rant.
Okay, now I'll rant for just a wee bit:

Consider this oft bandied-about figure of 1 in 8 and breast cancer. At best its meaningless propaganda, in reality it is intentionally deceptive and misleading. Yet try getting all those women marching around with pink ribbons to realize that. One doctor long ago presented five different treatments and a mathematically correct evaluation of each of them. He then had people allocate to the five various treatments whatever portion of a theoretical Million Dollar Research Fund they wanted. Of course all these different sums for different treatments having differently expressed mathematical results were really just five different ways of describing the exact same result. People were generally unable to deal with the data and realize there were no differences at all.

Consider all these Nigerian email scams, all these "Deposit this check and send us a portion" scams, consider all these Accept Merchandise At Your Home and then Ship It To Us" frauds, consider perhaps Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme. Its not the next generation that is math challenged. It is THIS generation that gets fooled far too often. Until a few short months ago, one casino had a website that stated "The odds are in YOUR favor". Now maybe it was a nice casino but I sure know that whatever the odds were, they were NOT in the player's favor but that web page was not aimed at the NEXT generation! It was aimed at YOU!!

For years re-zoning petitions have required impact statements that are an utter joke. Simpson's Paradox abounds in any such advocacy document. Politicians and lawyers know the public is math challenged already and don't have to worry about fooling the next generation of voters! They only have to fool this generation of voters!

The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function. A wide reaching claim made by Professor Emeritus Bartlett of University of Colorado at Boulder.

Since nearly every financial scheme, or errors made in gambling statistics, or mistake made in government projections is the inability to understand exponential expressions.

Quote: pacomartin

the inability to understand exponential expressions.

Exponential expressions? I'm having enough trouble with the callouses on my fingers from doing addition!

I've dealt me some cards and added them up. Then I shuffle them and see if I get the same total. That way I'm getting practice. Soon I hope to get the totals to come out the same.

In my experience it's very common for cashiers to ask for an extra coin or two. Either to round up the change you are due or to preserve coins, when they are running low on small change.

This can however go horribly wrong when people are math challenged.

Some time ago I was at a large department store and had to pay €19. I give a fifty to the girl working the registry. The following exchange occurs:

Checkout girl: do you have an extra euro?
Me: here you go (I figured she was out of 1 euro coins and only had 2 euro coins in the registry)
Checkout girl: (hands me a €10 and a €20 bill) Thanks, have a nice day.
Me: Ehm... you still owe me 2 euro.
Checkout girl: No, I gave you your change
Me: You only gave my €30, but you owed me €32
Checkout girl: -blank stare-
Me: Look, I gave you fifty for a 19 euro item, you asked for an extra euro so you still owe me 2 euro.
Checkout girl: (hands me a 1 euro coin)
Me: Ok, now you still owe me 1 euro
Checkout girl: But I just gave you a euro.
Me: Yes, you gave me back the euro I gave you, but I still need another euro
Checkout girl: I already gave you a euro.
*** this goes back and forth for a while ***
Me: Let's just forget I ever gave you the extra euro that you handed back. Just pretend that exchange never happened. Now, I gave you fifty and you had to give me 31 in change. You only gave me 30, so I'm still 1 short.
Checkout girl: No, I already gave you a euro.
Me: aaarghhhh
*** several people in line behind me try to nod reassuring to the girl that she indeed still owes me a euro and I am not trying to con her ***
Me: How much change do I get for a fifty when I buy something for 19?
Checkout girl: -blank stare- (I can tell she's really feeling nervous by this time)

This went on for several minutes more and no other personnel showed up to help this poor girl out. Eventually she handed me the euro, but I'm sure she had no idea whether I had justed conned her for €1 or not. I really hope the balance of the registry worked out that night and wasn't a euro short from some other mistake.

Oh yeah, this store has quite modern registries that calculate the change automatically. She just thought she was making life simpler by asking for an extra euro when she had to give me €31.

Heck, I was challenged by the math from just reading that post!

Quote: stephen

It would be nice if the movie studios or theaters would just publish attendance figures, but that's unlikely to happen.

When "Is There Sex After Death" opened in some Manhattan independent movie theater specializing in art films there was a promotional truck parked outside with things like Test Your Peter Power and similar carnival type advertizing for the movie. Unknown to the theater management they had a 24 hour camera on the box office and the distributor of the movie tried to sue for anticipated profits had the actual sales figures been accurately reported. Management of the movie theater even had two extra showings that were not reported and sales figures for what showing were reported were under-reported.