Researchers Create a Statistical Guide To Gambling 185
New submitter yukiloo writes "An early Christmas treat for the ordinary Joe who is stuck with a Christmas list that he cannot afford and is running out of time comes from two mathematicians (Evangelos Georgiadis, MIT, and Doron Zeilberger, Rutgers) and a computer scientist (Shalosh B. Ekhad). In their paper 'How to gamble if you're in a hurry,' they present algorithmic strategies and reclaim the world of gambling, which they say has up till recently flourished on the continuous Kolmogorov paradigm by some sugary discrete code that could make us hopefully richer, if not wiser. It's interesting since their work applies an advanced version of what seems to be the Kelly criterion."
Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore? (Score:2, Informative)
Not a Useful Guide (Score:5, Informative)
The paper is about how much to bet (your strategy) on a given round if you have x dollars and want to win N dollars. This is problematic for two reasons.
First, their method only works when the probability of winning is >0.5, which never happens in any real casino.
Second, almost nobody really bets this way. Most people don't go to a casino looking to win N dollars. Instead, they go to the casino hoping to play for time T without losing more than N dollars (although people might not be up front about that goal).
Another problem is that they assume that the probabiilty is constant with each round. That's true for some games (roulette), but not for others (blackjack).
Re:Actual article at ... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore? (Score:5, Informative)
No, he's complaining about the grammar, punctuation, and the irrelevance of the opening Christmas nonsense. He's not complaining about the math. A better summary made without even reading the article:
Evangelos Georgiades of MIT and Doron Zeilberger and Shalosh Ekhad of Rutgers have published a paper entitled, "How to Gamble, If You're in a Hurry." They consider previous work on gambling flawed because of theoreticians' reliance on the continuous Kolmogorov paradigm. Instead, they propose that money is not infinitely divisible and that its use in gambling is therefore better described by different algorithmic strategies involving what seems to be an advanced version of the Kelly criterion.
Ideas are nice, and math is beautiful, but clear English is necessary to convey information. The summary did not do that well.
Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore? (Score:0, Informative)
Being a bigot makes you an ass. No one said anything about America until you brought up this garbage. By the way, the research mentioned was done at MIT one of the finest universities in the entire world (which is located in America...).
Re:Note about Ekhad (Score:5, Informative)
shalosh b. ekhad is Hebrew for 3-in-1
Re:Not a Useful Guide (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah. The title of the paper is a bit misleading.
They are studying the case of some betting game with a fixed probability of winning p (with p>1/2) and a fixed 1:1 payout, using a discrete model of money, with no maximum bet, a minimum bet of $1, and all bets being constrained to a multiple of $1.
It is already known that if you enter with x dollars and you have a target amount of N, your best strategy is to always bet the minimum. Needless to say always betting the minimum can take forever, so even under this very unlikely set of circumstances, you would not want to actually follow that strategy.
So instead they introduce a round limit T, and introduce software that solves the relevant dynamic programming recurrence determine what you should bet given the probability p, your current balance x', your desired amount N, and the remaining number of rounds until the loan shark kills you T'.
Re:Well.... (Score:5, Informative)
http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/06/05/1828218/malfunction-costs-couple-11-million-slot-machine-jackpot [slashdot.org]
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/01/06/2246234/man-arrested-for-exploiting-error-in-slot-machines [slashdot.org]
These casinos pay the politicians in their states a lot of money to allow them to continue ripping people off. It's the american way!
Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore? (Score:5, Informative)
Haters gonna hate.
Bad idea to start with this overused cliche, which makes anyone spouting it sound like a tedious, unimaginative, bandwagon-jumping, meme-spouting 14-year-old trying to put across an unconvincing display of dismissive confidence, as well as being an obviously lame attempt at not actually addressing the original criticism.
Frankly, we'd be quite justified in not bothering to read the rest of what you said on the basis of those first three words of cliched drivel. But anyway...
Where people reside and make their contributions is ultimately the most important factor. Look at Einstein and how he was driven away from Germany and made all his contributions in America.
If, by "made all his contributions in America" you're implying that we have America to thank for all his work (including his most important), then you're absolutely wrong. The theories of special and general relativity were all written decades before he emigrated to the US.
That aside, not saying that I entirely disagree with what you said in general; ths US *has* been a valuable incubator for the creativity of foreign academics during the 20th century, which has arguably been to its own significant benefit.
Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore? (Score:5, Informative)
i'm an american & i've taken graduate-level measure theory and statistics. the phrase "continuous kolmogorov paradigm" is just wonky. the first thing one thinks of is the kolmogorov complexity, which is pretty much the opposite of "continuous," both in utility and intent. so, the phrase is probably referring instead to the standard modern sigma-field measure theoretic approach. however, this measure theory still has no problem (in principle, at least; actually proving things is of course another matter) dealing with discrete or finite outcomes!
now, i've read the paper, and i see that the authors in fact use (almost) this language in their emotional conclusion. that is their right, since they have done the work. moreover, they have a good point imho, that "hard core" proofs in probability theory are often sterile and irrelevant to the real world. however, this kind of thing should be cleaned up for a general audience.
Re:Do you even bother to edit submissions anymore? (Score:2, Informative)
Oh, can I try?
Evangelos Georgiadis [mit.edu] of MIT and Doron Zeilberger [rutgers.edu] of Rutgers, along with Zeiberger's computer Shalosh B. Ekhad [rutgers.edu], have written a paper entitled, "How to Gamble If You're In a Hurry," in which they propose new ways of studying gambling from a mathematical perspective. They criticize previous scholarship following the [arxiv.org]Kolmogorov measure-theoretic paradigm [google.com], including Kelly (1956) [bjmath.com], Breiman (1961) [google.com], and Dubins and Savage (1976) [google.com], on the grounds that the mechanisms they provide for winning do not take into account real-life constraints such as the finite divisibility of money, the finite duration of the game, the finite resources of the opponents, and the possibility of uneven payoff in the game. Rather than proposing a single strategy that provides an optimal outcome to an unrealistic scenario, Georgiadis and Zeilberger provide a Maple [maplesoft.com] package that calculates the best strategy given a set of real-world criteria, including the probability of winning a game, the amount of money you have, and the time within which you must complete your gambling. The paper thus represents a movement from using mathematics to derive single solutions to highly abstract problems to using algorithms that can generate optimal solutions for more concrete problems. Also, Zeiberger advances an attempt at cuteness by putting condescending words about humanity in his computer's mouth, the irony [wikipedia.org] of which is heightened by the realization that Shalosh B. Ekhad is nothing more than Zeiberger's ventriloquist dummy [wikipedia.org].