The Law Of Large Numbers says that, if you run an experiment often enough, the mean of the outcomes will converge onto the ‘true’ mean of the experiment.For each bet you win, the casino pays slightly less than ‘fair’ odds.How do the casinos always win? Well, it’s largely down to two things:
(If you don’t agree, buy one of the books in the last paragraph and I’ll get a few pence in kickbacks, hooray!) Why the casinos win Sure, you might get a few people who come out ahead by luck or guile - check out The Newtonian Casino or Bringing Down the House for a couple of examples, both of which highlight the amount of subterfuge needed to avoid getting your backside kicked out, or your head kicked in.īut this article’s not about subterfuge, it’s about random variables, which I’m sure you’ll agree is a much more exciting topic.
In this article, I’ll show you - using the binomial distribution and the normal distribution - why that is.
You don’t see many run-down, out-of-business casinos, which should serve as a tip-off: almost nobody beats the house in the long run.
