John McKown wrote:
too true. I may even start playing the state lottery, even though that's
not really a good idea. I understand enough statistics to know that.
After I interviewed Prof. William Kahan (designer of the math for the Intel
8087 co-processor) in 1997,
(
http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/a-conversation-with-william-kahan/184410314
)
we went out to lunch and he told me he was playing the California lottery, which had reached something like a $250M in
that cycle.
I was astounded. "A mathematician playing the lottery?"
"Sure," he replied. "Firstly, when the prize gets this large the odds payoff on a $1 ticket is so much larger than the
odds against you winning.
And secondly, if, like me, it's the only chance you're going to get in life to see
one million dollars, well, why not play?"
--
Jack J. Woehr # Science is more than a body of knowledge. It's a way of
www.well.com/~jax # thinking, a way of skeptically interrogating the universe
www.softwoehr.com # with a fine understanding of human fallibility. - Carl Sagan
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