Basic gambling mathematics

Description

"Understand the Math Underlying Some of Your Favorite Gambling Games Basic Gambling Mathematics: The Numbers Behind the Neon explains the mathematics involved in analyzing games of chance, including casino games, horse racing, and lotteries. The book helps readers understand the mathematical reasons why some gambling games are better for the player than others.Along with discussing the mathematics of well-known casino games, the author examines game variations that have been proposed or used in actual casinos. Numerous examples illustrate the mathematical ideas in a range of casino games while end-of-chapter exercises go beyond routine calculations to give readers hands-on experience with casino-related computations.The book begins with a brief historical introduction and mathematical preliminaries before developing the essential results and applications of elementary probability, including the important idea of mathematical expectation. The author then addresses probability questions arising from a variety of games, including roulette, craps, baccarat, blackjack, Caribbean stud poker, Royal Roulette, and sic bo. The final chapter explores the mathematics behind "get rich quick" schemes, such as the martingale and the Iron Cross, and shows how simple mathematics uncovers the flaws in these systems"-- "This book grew out of several years teaching about gambling in a variety of contexts at Albion College beginning in 2002. For several years, I taught a first-year seminar called "Chance", which I came to describe as "probability and statistics for the educated citizen" as distinguished from a formula-heavy approach to elementary statistics. I also focused more on probability than statistics in Chance. Part of probability is gambling, of course, and so over the years, the course evolved to include more casino examples in class, whether by simulation or actual in-class game play. The course included a field trip to the Soaring Eagle Casino in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, late in the semester after all of the students had turned 18. This provided the students with a fine opportunity to combine theory with practice and see for themselves how the laws of probability worked, in a way that no classroom activity could mimic. Later on, I expanded the gambling material into a course called Great Issues In Humanities: Perspectives on Gambling, in Albion's Honors Program. The course combined mathematics from Chance (for mathematics, in the words of one of my colleagues, is the first of the humanities) with other readings from literature, philosophy, and history to provide a well-rounded view of a subject that is not becoming less important in America. Throughout my years teaching about gambling, I struggled to find a good probability textbook that covered the topics germane to my course without a lot of material that was not related to gambling"--

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