What Are the Chances?

Given that I've been practically living at work this past week, you can probably guess what's on my mind. Seeing as it's bad customer service to tell people that their "systems" are complete crap, and I'd probably get fired for it, I guess I'll have to complain here instead. I've picked up on a couple of "systems" that people seem to have for beating roulette, and the most common ones seem to involve red/black or the two out of three dozens bet.

The first one is the idea that if you see someone spin a long line of numbers that are one colour (say black), then a red is sure to come up next (see: Gambler's fallacy)! That happened last night, when I had a streak of seven black numbers on my board. So I had a guy start to bet on red. Unfortunately for him, I spun a few more black numbers and then a zero, and then two more black numbers, and by that time, he had run out of money. It's true that the chance of getting a hundred billion numbers of one colour is low (1/2^hundred billion), but on any one spin, the chance of getting either colour is the same (48.6%, or 47.3% on a double-zero wheel). Work-Paul says that if anything, you should bet the streak, rather than trying to bet the opposite colour, although I'm of the opinion that both are bad lines of thinking.

Although, there are the people who have the idea that they can bet red/black, and if they lose, they just bet again and double their last bet, and keep doing that until they win, so eventually they will win, winning back their loses, as well as their original bet. Eg. You bet $5 on red, but lose. So you bet $10 on red, and win, getting you $10, leaving you with a total of $20, minus the $15 (5 + 10) that you bet, you made a profit of $5. It does work in theory, but if you think about it, you have two things working against you. First is the table maximum. You can only bet up to a certain amount, and while even on the cheapest table the max is $1000 for red/black, you might be really unlucky. The second thing is, the bets get out of control really quickly. The second thing is, the bets get out of control really quickly. I should really have just linked the wiki article (Martingale Betting System), thanks Julian and YC for reminding me what his name was.

No. Losses in a Row	Current Bet	Cumulative Amount
1	5	5
2	10	15
3	20	35
4	40	75
5	80	155
6	160	315
7	320	635
8	640	1275
9	1280	2555
10	2560	5115

So if you'd be risking over $300 if you were unlucky and happened to get 5 losses in a row (which I have seen - I managed to spin three zeroes in a row once - and zero in roulette is neither odd, even, red, nor black), and even after only 8 losses in a row, you've already hit the table maximum if you're going to try and win your money back. All to make a measly $5, which if you really had $5115 to risk, you'd have to be asking yourself why you're going to so much trouble for $5.

The second bad line of thinking is the two dozens/columns idea. If you bet red/black, odd/even/1-18/19-36, your chances are just under 50% of winning, but some people have the idea that if you bet two out of the three dozens/columns, your chances of winning are better than that (which is true), and so it's kinda like you're beating the system! For the non-roulette players, you can bet on three different dozens, 1-12/13-24/25-36, or on three columns (imagine the board divided into three columns) and if any of those numbers comes up, you win back twice what you bet (and you keep your bet).

So say you bet $5 on both the first and second dozens, if any numbers between 1 and 24 come up, you win $10 (double your bet), but you lose $5 (since at least one of your bets will have lost), leaving you with a total of $15 (10 + 5, the bet that won) minus the $5 you lost, meaning you won $5. However, if any numbers between 25 and 36 comes up, or a zero, then you lose $10.

Your chances of winning $5 are 24/37 (on a single zero wheel) = 0.65
Your chances of losing $10 are 13/37 (on a single zero wheel) = 0.35

Your expected return = (0.65 x $5) + (0.35 x -$10) = -$0.25

Chances are you will lose your money, so why do people keep insisting that this is a sure way to win?! T_T I guess if you're only playing for a few spins, then this is one of the better odds you can get on the table, but it's not a good idea long term.

To be honest, after a month of working there, I've only seen one winning system:

...you've got to ask yourself one question: Do [you] feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?

Saving Up!

OK, so since I've started working, and after I've paid myself back for Christmas and my "21st", I've saved a grand total of $1725.84, plus the money I had saved up before that, but that I don't really want to touch because I'm kinda saving it for a car/moving out (yes, it'll happen someday!). I'm still a bit uncertain about whether I should go to Italy. While I have wanted to go since high school, I know it'll still be there in a few years, but hopefully the economic crisis won't be, and it'll probably be better to travel when things aren't so bad. Plus, Julian suggested I travel around Australia, so that if I am spending money, at least it'll go back into the Australia economy, rather than overseas. The only thing is, other than the Monopoly streets, there isn't really anything that I want to see on the other Australian states. It's not like they have lots and lots of pizza or anything... >_>

Since I'm not training full time any more, my roster is kinda all over the place, and I can't really rely on a set income now, so MrMan5.5 suggested I work out how much spending money I want to leave myself every week (or fortnight, since I get paid fortnightly), and move the rest into a savings account that I can't touch.

So I tried to work out what my spending habits are like, and this is what I came up with:

Lunch $5 x 5 = $25
Dinner $20 x 3 = $60
Movie $15 x .5 = $7.50
Baking $15 x .25 = $3.75
LAN $2.50 x 1.5 = $3.75


I figure I have lunch at uni every weekday, dinner weekends and usually one weekday, see a movie every couple of weeks, bake something at least once a month (chocolate is expensive T_T), LAN for a few hours every couple of weeks, and that works out to be a weekly cost of $100.

I get about $16 an hour after tax and other costs, so if I work the minimum of 2 shifts a week, 8 hours per shift, I'll be making $256 a week, that lets me save $156 a week.

Let's say I leave for Italy in Feb next year, so there are about 36 weeks to save money, leaving me $5616, plus the $1725.84 that I've already saved. I kinda thought I should leave about $1000 for presents and Christmas so I don't go into Christmas debt again this year, which leaves:

$6341.84

I figured it'd cost at least $10,000 for a trip overseas, maybe even more, so the decision to wait a bit before going to Italy is probably a good thing. Just looking at that, do people think that's reasonable? I really have no idea where my money goes, I just get paid, and all of a sudden, I'm broke again, although I have a sinking suspicion that most of it goes towards food, books and DVDs. =/

So thinking of ways to save money, I could probably eat at work, since they feed us food for free - but the more I eat there, the faster I think I'm going to die, so I really don't want to be eating there. T_T I've started using the library a lot more, and renting DVDs rather than buying them. I'm kinda glad MrMan5.5 isn't rich either, because it means neither of us really wants to go to some super fancy restaurant to eat food - and to be honest, most of our "dates" have been at Hungry Jacks or McDonald's, so it's not really like we're spending hundreds of dollars just to spend time with each other, which I really like (although, I don't think eating that food is really all that much better than eating the food at work >_>). Sharon and I have been talking about learning to ride a bike, because other than the initial cost of buying a bike, and possibly the pain of learning to ride it, it's something that's free to do.

I hope that even if I decide not to go to Italy, that I'll still have the motivation to save up money. >_<