Chance News 29

From ChanceWiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search

Quotations

"There are few things that are so unpardonably neglected in our country as poker. The upper class knows very little about it. Now and then you find ambassadors who have sort of a general knowledge of the game, but the ignorance of the people is fearful. Why, I have known clergymen, good men, kind-hearted, liberal, sincere, and all that, who did not know the meaning of a "flush." It is enough to make one ashamed of the species".

Mark Twain.

Forsooth

The following Forsooth was suggested by Jerry Grossman.

In addition, a person's odds of becoming obese increased by 57 percent if he or she had a friend who became obese over a certain time interval. If the two people were mutual friends, the odds increased to 171 percent.

Family, Friend May "Spread" Obesity
Revolution Health
July 25, 2007

This discussion relates to an article The Spread of Obesity in a Large Social Network over 32 Years that appeared in the July 26, 2007 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine and seems to be freely available. Of course here the "increased to 171 percent" is "increased by 71%.

Jerry remarks "The NEJM article is interesting to those of us interested in the mathematical aspects of the social network."

Is Poker predominantly skill or luck?

Harvard ponders just what it takes to excel at poker
Wall Street Journal, May 3, 2007, A1
Neil King JR.

The article reports on a one day meeting in the Harvard Faculty Club of poker pros, game theorists, statisticians, law students and gambling lobbyist to develop a strategy to show that poker is not predominantly a game of chance.

In the article we read:

The skill debate has been a preoccupation in poker circles since September, when Congress barred the use of credit cards for online wagers. Horse racing and stock trading were exempt, but otherwise the new law hit any 'game predominantly subject to chance' Included among such games was poker, which is increasingly played on Internet sites hosting players from all over the world.

This, of course, is not a new issue. For example it is the subject of the Mark Twains short story Science vs. Luck published in October 1870 issue of The Galaxy. In the story a number of boys were arrested for playing "old sledge" for money. Old sledge was a popular card game in those times often played for money. In the trial the judge finds that half the experts say that old sledge is a game of science and half that it is a game of skill. The lawyer for the boys suggests:

Impanel a jury of six of each, Luck versus Science -- give them candles and a couple of decks of cards, send them into the jury room, and just abide by the result!

The Judge agrees that this is a good way to decide old sledge is a game of science or luck and so four deacons and the two dominies (Clergymen) were sworn in as the "chance" jurymen, and six inveterate old seven-up professors were chosen to represent the "science" side of the issue. They retired to the jury room.

The professors ended up with all the money and the boys were found innocent.

Today more sophisticated ways to determine if a gambling game is predominantly skill or luck. Ryne Sherman written an article "Towards a Skill Ratio" in the May and June issue of the plus Two Internet Magazine.

Sherman writes:

If two poker payers play in two equally difficult ring games, why don't both players win the same amount of money? Typically there are two answers to tis question. Either one player was more skilled, or one player was lucker. The purpose of this article is to provide a qunatitative way to measure both of these differences.

He proposes measuring skill by the statistical concepts of "systematic variance" by "random variance." These are to be obtain by ANOVA. Sherman does not describe how this is done but John Carey has a nice discripsion http://www.unc.edu/courses/2006spring/psyc/130/001/variance.html here]. We will use this to provide an example relating to poker.

John and Laurie play in a low key poker game with seven players. Here are John and Laurie winnings (to the neares dollar) in six of the games.

Laurie
John
-1
5
2
4
-3
-2
-2
7
-2
-5
1
4

Item2