Chance News 11
Quotation
"Then there was the man who drowned crossing a stream with an average depth of six inches." - W.I.E. Gates
Forsooth
Here is a Forsooth from the December 2005 issue of RSS News.
The current rate of shrinkage they calculate at 8% per decade; at this rate there may be no ice at all during the summer of 2060
Investing in a poker player
Texas Hold'em poker is sweeping the globe as a favorite pastime of gamblers, young and old, novices and experts.
The following web site discusses a proposition from an amateur poker player to gain financial backing for entry into the 2006 World Series of Poker.
Questions
Can playing tournament poker be legitimately described as an "investment" (one with medium risk and potentially high return)?
What factors would you look for to determine the attractiveness of this investment opportunity?
Å game show for probalists
A game show for the probability theorist in us all <|br>
New York Times, Dec. 14, A19
Gia kourlas
This article describes the new NBC game show called "Deal or No Deal" The rules are described on the NBC website as:
The rules are simple. Choose a briefcase. Then as each round progresses, you must either stay with your original briefcase choice or make a "deal" with the bank to accept its cash offer in exchange for whatever dollar amount is in your chosen case. Once you decide to accept or decline the bank's offer, the decision is final.
To fully understand the game you should play it once here. Choose "game" from the options and go to the bottom of the page that comes up and choose "start".
The Times article states that it is not known how the bank determines its offer. Kourias reports that at a meeting at his house to discuss the game, some thought the decisions my be based on probability concepts such as expected values and others thought that it had "psychological--but not logical--coherence.
Of course the game as played on the Internet the bank clearly has a strategy for determing the offer and if this were known we would have an optional stopping problem reminiscent of the famous secretary problem. This is obviously a nice challenge for students in a probability or statistics class.