DiscourseFan
9 months ago
Interesting but the paper suffers in certain respects within its methodology by conflating real probabilities vs theoretical probabilities.
Roulette, for instance, is only theoretically 38/1, but in actuality all roulette tables have imperfections such that certain numbers almost always get hit more than others; even certain colors, under extraordinary circumstances.
One could say: well, but isn't this the case for all probabilities? Not so: in the case of the lottery, the spread of numbers people tend to choose may not be so random, but the drawing itself is as close to random as possible. A run on the lottery is very different from a run on a roulette table and a run in baseball, or even a run in elections: there are forces, even if they aren't necessarily measurable, that determine these things and strict probabilistic analysis has no hold on these forces. It's almost certainly the case that a hurricane will hit Florida in September of 2025, even though nobody can precisely predict it, nobody would bet against it. It's just the same way with almost all chance in society, except for that which is already controlled from the outset.
notahacker
9 months ago
> actuality all roulette tables have imperfections such that certain numbers almost always get hit more than others; even certain colors, under extraordinary circumstances
Seems unlikely these imperfections are enough to shift it significantly from 1/38, based on both the variation in the geometry of roulette tables that's small enough to be non-obvious being tiny in comparison with the variation in croupier action, and the likelihood of casinos noticing any very long run deviation in the size of their edge (which is contingent upon customers hitting the zero pocket(s) with a certain frequency)
conformist
9 months ago
Yes, but it's potentially more subtle - there's a competition between professional players and casinos, in particular online. There's an interesting bloomberg story on this: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2023-04-06/meet-n...